Related papers: Autonomous Restructuring of Asteroids into Rotatin…
We propose to use a modest fraction of the re-purposed Kepler mission time and apertures to greatly increase the quantity and quality of our knowledge of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) rotation and shape. NEAs are important for understanding…
Estimates for asteroid masses are based on their gravitational perturbations on the orbits of other objects such as Mars, spacecraft, or other asteroids and/or their satellites. In the case of asteroid-asteroid perturbations, this leads to…
The rotational distribution of asteroids as a function of their size is used {as a diagnostic of} their physical properties and evolution. Recent photometric surveys from the Gaia mission, allowing observation of asteroids with long spin…
There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions in the Main Belt. They are diverse in physical properties and composition and are time capsules of the early solar system. This makes them strategic locations for planetary…
Human long duration exploration missions (LDEMs) raise a number of technological challenges. This paper addresses the question of the crew autonomy: as the distances increase, the communication delays and constraints tend to prevent the…
More than a half of asteroids in the main belt have irregular shapes with the ratios of the minor to major axis lengths less than 0.6. One of the mechanisms to create such shapes is collisions between asteroids. The relationship between…
Most stars, perhaps even all stars, form in crowded stellar environments. Such star forming regions typically dissolve within ten million years, while others remain bound as stellar groupings for hundreds of millions to billions of years,…
Binary asteroid formation is a highly complex process, which has been highlighted with recent observations of satellites with unexpected shapes, such as the oblate Dimorphos by the NASA DART mission and the contact binary Selam by NASA's…
Cells and microorganisms employ dynamic shape changes to enable steering and avoidance for efficient spatial exploration and collective organization. In contrast, active colloids, their synthetic counterparts, currently lack similar…
In models of planetary accretion, pebbles form by dust coagulation and rapidly migrate toward the central star. Planetesimals may continuously form from pebbles over the age of the protoplanetary disk by yet uncertain mechanisms. Meanwhile,…
An asteroid pair can be described as two asteroids with highly similar heliocentric orbits that are genetically related but not gravitationally bound. They can be produced by asteroid collisions or rotational fission. Although over 200…
The increasing number of space missions may overwhelm ground support infrastructure, prompting the need for autonomous deep-space guidance, navigation, and control (GN\&C) systems. These systems offer sustainable and cost-effective…
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…
Surface shedding of an asteroid is a failure mode where surface materials fly off due to strong centrifugal forces beyond the critical spin period, while the internal structure does not deform significantly. This paper proposes a possible…
In this work we present SAGE (Shaping Asteroid models using Genetic Evolution) asteroid modelling algorithm based solely on photometric lightcurve data. It produces non-convex shapes, rotation axes orientati and rotational periods of…
The population of known minor bodies in retrograde orbits ($i > 90 ^{\circ}$) that are classified as asteroids is still growing. The aim of our study was to estimate the dynamical lifetimes of these bodies by use of the latest observational…
Asteroidal impact threats to the Earth will be predicted a century or more in advance. Changing an asteroid's albedo changes the force of Solar radiation on it, and hence its orbit. Albedo may be changed by applying a thin ($\sim 0.1\,\mu$)…
The rubble pile spin barrier is an upper limit on the rotation rate of asteroids larger than ~200-300 m. Among thousands of asteroids with diameters larger than ~300 m, only a handful of asteroids are known to rotate faster than 2.0 h, all…
Current practice for asteroid close proximity maneuvers requires extremely accurate characterization of the environmental dynamics and precise spacecraft positioning prior to the maneuver. This creates a delay of several months between the…
At a mean diameter of ~650 m, the near-Earth asteroid (455213) 2001 OE84 (OE84 for short) has a rapid rotation period of 0.486542+-0.000002 hours, which is uncommon for asteroids larger than ~200 m. We revisited OE84 14 years after it was…