Related papers: Asteroids fail to retain cometary impact signature…
The recent discovery of the first V-type asteroid in the middle belt, (21238) 1995WV7, located at ~2.54 AU, raises the question of whether it came from (4) Vesta or not. In this paper, we present spectroscopic observations indicating the…
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…
V-type asteroids are associated with basaltic composition, and are supposed to be fragments of crust of differentiated objects. Most V-type asteroids in the main belt are found in the inner main belt, and are either current members of the…
Observations of asteroid 4 Vesta by NASA's Dawn spacecraft are interesting because its surface has the largest range of albedo, color and composition of any other asteroid visited by spacecraft to date. These hemispherical and rotational…
Most meteorites are fragments from recent collisions experienced in the asteroid belt. In such a hyper-velocity collision, the smaller collision partner is destroyed, whereas a crater on the asteroid is formed or it is entirely disrupted,…
The main asteroid belt (MAB) is known to be primarily composed of objects from two distinct taxonomic classes, generically defined here as S- and C-complex. The former probably originated from the inner solar system (interior to Jupiter's…
Collision and disruption processes of proto-planetary bodies in the early solar system are key to understanding the genesis of diverse types of main-belt asteroids. Mesosiderites are stony-iron meteorites that formed by mixing of…
We present the observational results of a survey designed to target and detect asteroids whose colors are similar to those of Vesta family members and thus may be considered as candidates for having a basaltic composition. Fifty basaltic…
This is a study of the history of the asteroids in the main asteroid belt. Collisions have been the dominant process. Every asteroid has been impacted by others a multitude of times, with consequences of cratering, erosion, spin increments,…
A large disruption in the main asteroid belt can cause a large flux, an "asteroid shower", on the terrestrial planets. We quantitatively examine the hypothesis that such an event was the cause of the lunar late heavy bombardment (LHB). We…
Containing only a few percent the mass of the moon, the current asteroid belt is around three to four orders of magnitude smaller that its primordial mass inferred from disk models. Yet dynamical studies have shown that the asteroid belt…
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…
V-type asteroids, characterized by two absorption bands at 1.0 and 2.0 $\mu m$, are usually thought to be portions of the crust of differentiated or partially differentiated bodies. Most V-type asteroids are found in the inner main belt and…
The origins of carbonaceous asteroids in the asteroid belt is not fully understood. The leading hypothesis is that they were not born at their current location but instead implanted into the asteroid belt early in the Solar System history.…
It is generally accepted today that our solar system has undergone a phase during which the orbits of the giant planets became very unstable. In recent years, many studies have identified traces of this event and have provided reasonable…
A considerable amount of information regarding the processes that occurred during the accretion of the early planetesimals is still present among the small bodies of our solar system. A review of our current knowledge of the density of…
The orbital structure of the asteroid belt holds a record of the Solar System's dynamical history. The current belt only contains ${\rm \sim 10^{-3}}$ Earth masses yet the asteroids' orbits are dynamically excited, with a large spread in…
We infer the crater chronologies of Ceres and Vesta from a self-consistent dynamical model of asteroid impactors. The model accounts for planetary migration/instability early in the solar system history and tracks asteroid orbits over 4.56…
Erosive collisions among planetary embryos in the inner solar system can lead to multiple remnant bodies, varied in mass, composition and residual velocity. Some of the smaller, unbound debris may become available to seed the main asteroid…
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…