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In recent years, nine small near-Earth asteroids were discovered a few hours before the collision with the Earth: these are about one meter in diameter objects that have all disintegrated in the atmosphere, generating bright fireballs…
Dynamical interactions between planets and debris discs can excite the orbits of embedded planetesimals to such a degree that a collisional cascade is triggered, generating detectable amounts of dust. Millimetre wavelength observations are…
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…
Asteroids smaller than about 100 meters are observed to rotate very fast, with periods often much shorter than the critical limit of 2.2 h. Some of these super-fast rotators can also achieve a very large semi-major axis drift induced by the…
About 10% of the observed asteroids have rotational periods lower than P = 3 h and they seem to be relatively close to the spin barrier. Yet, the rotation has often been neglected in simulations of asteroid collisions. To determine the…
Context. The sizes of many asteroids, especially slowly rotating, low-amplitude targets, remain poorly constrained due to selection effects. These biases limit the availability of high-quality data, leaving size estimates reliant on…
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…
Superfast rotators (SFRs) are small solar system objects that rotate faster than generally possible for a cohesionless rubble pile. Their rotational characteristics allow us to make inferences about their interior structure and composition.…
Seismic shaking is an attractive mechanism to explain the destabilisation of regolith slopes and the regolith migration found on the surfaces of asteroids (Richardson et al. 2004; Miyamoto et al. 2007). Here, we use a continuum mechanics…
We have evaluated the rate at which the asteroid belt is losing material, and how it splits between macroscopic bodies and meteoritic dust. The mass loss process is due to the injection of asteroid fragments into unstable dynamical regions,…
Many asteroids are rubble piles with irregular shapes. While the irregular shapes of large asteroids may be attributed to collisional events, those of small asteroids may result from not only impact events but also rotationally induced…
Recent observations of asteroidal surfaces indicate the presence of materials that do not match the bulk lithology of the body. A possible explanation for the presence of these exogenous materials is that they are products of inter-asteroid…
Since the late 1950s, when the first artificial satellite was launched, the number of Resident Space Objects has steadily increased. It is estimated that around one million objects larger than one cm are currently orbiting the Earth, with…
Context. The discovery and tracking of 2018 LA marks only the third instance in history that the parent body of a fireball has been identified before its eventual disintegration in our atmosphere. The subsequent recovery of meteorites from…
The asteroids are the major source of potential impactors on the Earth today. It has long been assumed that the giant planet Jupiter acts as a shield, significantly lowering the impact rate on the Earth from both cometary and asteroidal…
In their model for the origin of the parent bodies of iron meteorites, Bottke et al proposed differentiated planetesimals that were formed in the region of 1-2 AU during the first 1.5 Myr, as the parent bodies, and suggested that these…
The study of asteroids, its composition and trajectories, has been a persistent interest in the space exploration community. In addition, they are also perceived as a great threat to life on Earth, considering the possibility of an impact…
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…
A ballistic reconstruction of a meteoroid orbit can be made if enough information is available about its trajectory inside the atmosphere. A few methods have been devised in the past and used in several cases to trace back the origin of…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…