Related papers: Ab initio strewn field for small asteroids impacts
We present the results of the first-ever visible spectroscopic survey fully dedicated to the small (absolute magnitude H>20) near-Earth asteroid (NEA) population. Observations have been performed at the New Technology Telescope (NTT) of the…
Large or even medium sized asteroids impacting the Earth can cause damage on a global scale. Existing and planned concepts for finding near-Earth objects (NEOs) with diameter of 140 m or larger would take ~15-20 years of observation to find…
Today there are numerous studies on asteroid mining. They elaborate on selecting the right objects, prospecting missions, potential asteroid redirection, and the mining process itself. For economic reasons, most studies focus on mining…
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…
Two dedicated asteroid rotation-period surveys have been carried out using data taken on January 6-9 and February 20-23 of 2014 by the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) in the $R$~band with $\sim 20$-min cadence. The total…
The study of asteroid families has provided tremendous insight into the forces that sculpted the main belt and continue to drive the collisional and dynamical evolution of asteroids. The identification of asteroid families within the NEO…
Asteroids with companions constitute an excellent sample for studying the collisional and dynamical evolution of minor planets. The currently known binary population were discovered by different complementary techniques that produce, for…
The distribution of heavy elements is anomalously low in the asteroid main belt region compared with elsewhere in the solar system. Observational surveys also indicate a deficit in the number of small ($ \le 50$~km size) asteroids that is…
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…
Hilda asteroids, which orbit in a 3:2 resonance with Jupiter, serve as key indicators of dynamical processes in the early solar system. Their spin rates, an important probe of these mechanisms, can constrain their density and collisional…
As astronomical photometric surveys continue to tile the sky repeatedly, the potential to pushdetection thresholds to fainter limits increases; however, traditional digital-tracking methods cannotachieve this efficiently beyond time scales…
Conditions for regolith landslides to occur on spinning, gravitating spheroidal asteroids and their aftermath are studied. These conditions are developed by application of classical granular mechanics stability analysis to the asteroid…
The distribution of asteroid sizes by semimajor axes and the distribution of the number of asteroids by albedo values for separate families are used to selection the asteroid families more clearly. An analysis of the families identified by…
We continue our investigation of the bulk properties of asteroid dynamical families identified using only asteroid proper elements (Milani et al. 2014) to provide plausible collisional interpretations. We focus on cratering families…
From Jan. 6, 2019 to Feb. 18, 2019, OSIRIS-REx observed asteroid (101955) Bennu ejecting 11 plumes of dust, of which part is escaping and another part is re-captured by the asteroid. The relative magnitudes of the typical forces acting on…
Families of asteroids generated by the collisional fragmentation of a common parent body have been identified using clustering methods of asteroids in their proper orbital element space. An alternative method has been developed in order to…
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…
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.…
We have studied the conditions of through passage of asteroids with diameters 200, 100 and 50 m, consisting of three types of materials -- iron, stone and water ice across the Earth's atmosphere with the minimum trajectory altitude 10--15…
We present a study of the active asteroid (3200) Phaethon in the 2016 apparition using the STEREO spacecraft and compare the results with data from the previous two perihelia in 2009 and 2012. Once again, Phaethon brightened by $\sim$2 mag…