Related papers: Reshaping and ejection processes on rubble-pile as…
The impact response of rubble-pile asteroids is essential for both elucidating their formation and evolution history and evaluating the efficacy of impact defense strategies. Although state-of-the-art numerical simulations have allowed for…
Debris disks are the natural by-products of the planet formation process. Scattered or polarized light observations are mostly sensitive to small dust grains that are released from the grinding down of bigger planetesimals. High angular…
After the early observations of the disrupted asteroid P/2016 G1 with the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), and the modeling of the dust ejecta, we have performed a follow-up observational campaign of this object using the Hubble Space…
This paper outlines the Radio Science Experiment (RSE) proposed for the RAMSES mission to asteroid (99942) Apophis, which will undergo a close Earth encounter in April 2029. This event provides a unique opportunity to study the asteroid's…
The rotational properties of small near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) provide crucial insights into their internal structure and collisional history. However, systematic surveys targeting metre- to decametre-sized bodies are rare, thus leaving…
There is increasing evidence that many km-sized bodies in the Solar System are piles of rubble bound together by gravity. We present results from a project to map the parameter space of collisions between km-sized spherical rubble piles.…
In most debris discs, dust grain dynamics is strongly affected by stellar radiation pressure. As this mechanism is size-dependent, we expect dust grains to be spatially segregated according to their sizes. However, because of the complex…
The ~200 m/s impact of a single 400-kg Bjurb\"ole L/LL ordinary chondrite meteorite onto sea ice resulted in the catastrophic disruption of the projectile. This resulted in a significant fraction of decimeter-sized fragments that exhibit…
Satellites around large asteroids are preferentially found among those with the most rapid rotation and elongated shape. The taxonomic statistics are similarly skewed; in total, 13 asteroids larger than 100 km are known to have satellites,…
Phobos is the target of the return sample mission Martian Moons eXploration by JAXA that will analyze in great details the physical and compositional properties of the satellite from orbit, from the surface and in terrestrial laboratories,…
In close binary systems, tidal interactions and rotational effects can strongly influence stellar evolution as a result of mass-transfer, common envelope phases, ... All these aspects can only be treated following improvements of…
We have developed a theoretical description of how of an asteroid's polarization-phase curve will be affected by the removal of the dust from the surface due to a size-dependent phenomenon such as radiation pressure-driven escape of…
The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) proposes to retrieve a near-Earth asteroid and position it in a lunar distant retrograde orbit (DRO) for later study, crewed exploration, and ultimately resource exploitation. During the Caltech Space…
Strong dynamical interactions among stars and compact objects are expected in a variety of astrophysical settings, such as star clusters and the disks of active galactic nuclei. Via a suite of 3D hydrodynamics simulations using the…
We consider the observational signatures of giant impacts between planetary embryos. While the debris released in the impact remains in a clump for only a single orbit, there is a much longer lasting asymmetry caused by the fact that all…
The size-dependent effects of asteroids on surface regolith and collisional lifetimes suggest that small asteroids are younger than large asteroids. In this study, we performed multicolor main-belt asteroid (MBA) survey by Subaru…
The rotational-fission of a rubble-pile asteroid can result in an "asteroid pair", two un-bound asteroids sharing similar orbits. This mechanism might exposes material that previously had never have been exposed to the weathering conditions…
Recently published crater statistics on the small asteroids 25143 Itokawa and 433 Eros show a significant depletion of craters below approx. 100 m in diameter. Possible mechanisms that were brought up to explain this lack of craters were…
We consider how an impact generated seismic pulse affects the surface of an asteroid distant from the impact site. With laboratory experiments on dry polydisperse gravel mixtures, we track the trajectories of particles ejected from the…
From the results of a comprehensive asteroid population evolution model, we conclude that the YORP-induced rotational fission hypothesis can be consistent with the observed population statistics of small asteroids in the main belt including…