Related papers: Constraining the Interiors of Asteroids Through Cl…
Near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that may evolve into impactors deserve detailed threat assessment studies. Early physical characterization of a would-be impactor may help in optimizing impact mitigation plans. We first detected NEA…
Main-belt asteroids have been continuously colliding with one another since they were formed. Its size distribution is primarily determined by the size dependence of asteroid strength against catastrophic impacts. The strength scaling law…
Context: Observation of star occultations is a powerful tool to determine shapes and sizes of asteroids. This is key information necessary for studying the evolution of the asteroid belt and to calibrate indirect methods of size…
Recent works have shown that the thermal inertia of km-sized near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of main belt asteroids (MBAs) with sizes (diameters) between 200 and 1,000 km. This confirms the…
<abridged> NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) has been proposed with the aim to capture a small asteroid a few meters in size and redirect it into an orbit around the Moon. There it can be investigated at leisure by astronauts aboard an…
Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are a key testbed for investigations into planet formation, asteroid dynamics, and planetary defense initiatives. These studies rely on understanding NEA sizes, albedo distributions, and regolith properties.…
The population of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) shows a large variety of objects in terms of physical and dynamical properties. They are subject to planetary encounters and to strong solar wind and radiation effects. Their study is also…
We present new thermophysical model (TPM) fits of 1,847 asteroids, deriving thermal inertia, diameter, and Bond and visible geometric albedo. We use thermal flux measurements obtained by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE; Wright…
Asteroid diameters are traditionally difficult to estimate. When a direct measurement of the diameter cannot be made through either occultation or direct radar observation, the most common method is to approximate the diameter from infrared…
The asteroid belt is a unique source of information on some of the most important questions facing solar system science. These questions include the sizes, numbers, types and orbital distributions of the planetesimals that formed the…
We investigated the reliability of the genetic algorithm which will be used to invert the photometric measurements of asteroids collected by the European Space Agency Gaia mission. To do that, we performed several sets of simulations for 10…
In granular systems, thermal cycling causes compaction, creep, penetration of dense objects, and ratcheting of grains against each other. On asteroid surfaces, thermal cycling is high amplitude and can happen billions of times in a few…
Photometry results of 32 asteroids are reported from only seven observing nights on only seven fields, consisting of 34.11 cumulative hours of observations. The data were obtained with a wide-field CCD (40.5'x27.3') mounted on a small,…
This paper presents an analysis of optimal impact strategies to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids. To compute the increase in the minimum orbit intersection distance of the asteroid due to an impact with a spacecraft, simple…
The aim is to show that in case of low probability of asteroid collision with Earth, the appropriate selection and weighing of the data are crucial for the impact investigation, and to analyze the impact possibilities using extensive…
Accurate measurements of osculating orbital elements are essential in order to understand and model the complex dynamic behavior of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs). ESA's Gaia mission promises to have great potential in this respect. In this…
Asteroid pairs had a single progenitor that split due to rotational-fission of a weak, rubble-pile structured body. By constructing shape models of asteroid pairs from multiple-apparition observations and using a lightcurve inversion…
We analyzed 82,548 carefully curated observations of 4420 asteroids with Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) four-band data to produce estimates of diameters and infrared emissivities. We also used these diameter values in…
We have made an extensive search for grouping amongst the near Earth asteroids (NEAs). We used two D- functions and rigorous cluster analysis approach. We have found sev- eral new groups (associations) among the NEAs: the objects moving on…
Asteroid surfaces are subjected to mechanical weathering processes that result in the development and evolution of regolith. Two proposed mechanisms--impact bombardment and thermal fatigue--have been proposed as viable and dominant…