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- Li, Jian-Yang, et al.
(författare)
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Ejecta from the DART-produced active asteroid Dimorphos
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 616, s. 452-456
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Some active asteroids have been proposed to be formed as a result of impact events1. Because active asteroids are generally discovered by chance only after their tails have fully formed, the process of how impact ejecta evolve into a tail has, to our knowledge, not been directly observed. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission of NASA2, in addition to having successfully changed the orbital period of Dimorphos3, demonstrated the activation process of an asteroid resulting from an impact under precisely known conditions. Here we report the observations of the DART impact ejecta with the Hubble Space Telescope from impact time T + 15 min to T + 18.5 days at spatial resolutions of around 2.1 km per pixel. Our observations reveal the complex evolution of the ejecta, which are first dominated by the gravitational interaction between the Didymos binary system and the ejected dust and subsequently by solar radiation pressure. The lowest-speed ejecta dispersed through a sustained tail that had a consistent morphology with previously observed asteroid tails thought to be produced by an impact4,5. The evolution of the ejecta after the controlled impact experiment of DART thus provides a framework for understanding the fundamental mechanisms that act on asteroids disrupted by a natural impact1,6.
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| 2. |
- Michikami, Tatsuhiro, et al.
(författare)
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Three-axial shape distributions of pebbles, cobbles and boulders smaller than a few meters on asteroid Ryugu
- 2022
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Ingår i: Icarus. - : Elsevier. - 0019-1035 .- 1090-2643. ; 381
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over a broad size range, the shapes of impact fragments from catastrophic disruptions are distributed around the mean axial ratio 2: √2: 1, irrespective of experimental conditions and target materials. Although most blocks on asteroids are likely to be impact fragments, there is not enough quantitative data for reliable statistics on their three-axial lengths and/or ratios because it is difficult to precisely estimate the heights of the blocks. In this study, we evaluate the heights of blocks on asteroid Ryugu by measuring their shadows. The three-axial ratios of ~4100 small blocks with diameters from 5.0 cm to 7.6 m in Ryugu's equatorial region are investigated using eight close-up images of narrower localities taken at altitudes below 500 m, i.e. at <5.4 cm/pixel resolution, obtained immediately before the second touch-down of the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. The purpose of this study is to investigate the block shape distribution, which is important for understanding the geological history of asteroid Ryugu. Specifically, the shape distribution is compared to laboratory impact fragments. Our observations indicate that the shape distributions of blocks smaller than 1 m on Ryugu are consistent with laboratory impact fragment shape distributions, implying that the dominant shape-determining process for blocks on Ryugu was impact fragmentation. Blocks several meters in size in the equatorial region seem to be slightly flatter than the rest, suggesting that some blocks are partly buried in a bed of regolith. In conclusion, the shape distributions of blocks from several-cm to several-m in the equatorial region of asteroid Ryugu suggest that these are mainly fragments originating from the catastrophic disruption of their parent body and/or from a later impact.
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