Related papers: Asteroids fail to retain cometary impact signature…
The NASA Dawn spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral in September 2007 atop a Delta II rocket starting an ambitious journey to Vesta and Ceres, the two most massive worlds in the largest reservoir of asteroids in the Solar System, the Main…
<<>> Among the components of the infrared and submillimetre sky background, the closest layer is the thermal emission of dust particles and minor bodies in the Solar System. This contribution is especially important for current and future…
New insights into the history of the inner solar system are derived from the impact cratering record of the Moon, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and from the size distributions of asteroid populations. Old craters from a unique period of heavy…
Dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt, has a surface that exhibits a range of crater densities for a crater diameter range of 5-300 km. In all areas the shape of the craters' size-frequency distribution is very…
Dusty discs detected around main-sequence stars are thought to be signs of planetesimal belts in which the dust distribution is shaped by collisional and dynamical processes, including interactions with gas if present. The debris disc…
We propose a scenario for the formation of the Main Belt in which asteroids incorporated icy particles formed in the outer Solar Nebula. We calculate the composition of icy planetesimals formed beyond a heliocentric distance of 5 AU in the…
Mechanisms such as collisions of rocky bodies or cometary activity give rise to dusty debris disks. Debris disks trace the leftover building blocks of planets, and thus also planetary composition. HD 172555, a stellar twin of beta Pic,…
Asteroid discoveries are essential for planetary-defense efforts aiming to prevent impacts with Earth, including the more frequent megaton explosions from decameter impactors. While large asteroids ($\geq$100 km) have remained in the main…
Our knowledge of main-belt comets (MBCs), which exhibit comet-like activity likely due to the sublimation of volatile ices, yet orbit in the main asteroid belt, has increased greatly since the discovery of the first known MBC,…
The asteroid belt contains less than a thousandth of Earth's mass and is radially segregated, with S-types dominating the inner belt and C-types the outer belt. It is generally assumed that the belt formed with far more mass and was later…
Photometric observations of asteroids show that some of them are in non-principal axis rotation state (free precession), called tumbling. Collisions between asteroids have been proposed as a possible asteroid rotation excitation mechanism.…
Non-resolved thermal infrared observations enable studies of thermal and physical properties of asteroid surfaces provided the shape and rotational properties of the target are well determined via thermo-physical models. We used…
All asteroids are currently classified as either family, originating from the disruption of known bodies, or non-family. An outstanding question is the origin of these non-family asteroids. Were they formed individually, or as members of…
This thesis presents insights into the surface compositional heterogeneity and geology of asteroid Vesta. Lithologic mapping using Framing Camera onboard the NASA Dawn spacecraft revealed that the majority of the surface is howarditic in…
Some asteroids eject dust, producing transient, comet-like comae and tails; these are the active asteroids. The causes of activity in this newly-identified population are many and varied. They include impact ejection and disruption,…
Our knowledge of the strengths of small bodies in the Solar System is limited by our poor understanding of their internal structures, and this, in turn, clouds our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies. Observations…
Small asteroids intersecting Earth's orbit can deliver extraterrestrial rocks to the Earth, called meteorites. This process is accompanied by a luminous phenomena in the atmosphere, called bolides or fireballs. Observations of bolides…
The cratering history of main belt asteroid (2867) Steins has been investigated using OSIRIS imagery acquired during the Rosetta flyby that took place on the 5th of September 2008. For this purpose, we applied current models describing the…
The study of active asteroids has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years since the recognition of main-belt comets (which orbit in the main asteroid belt, but exhibit comet-like activity due to the sublimation of volatile ices)…
The orbital architecture of the Solar System is thought to have been sculpted by a dynamical instability among the giant planets. During the instability a primordial outer disk of planetesimals was destabilized and ended up on…