Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p11c1235b&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P11C-1235
Other
[6022] Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies / Impact Phenomena, [6055] Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies / Surfaces, [6205] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Asteroids
Scientific paper
The ROSETTA spacecraft, on its way to rendez-vous comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, has successfully flew by asteroid 2867 Steins in September 2008. The OSIRIS experiment (Keller et al, 2007) has imaged the asteroid both with the Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC). The resolutions of the images are sufficient to distinguish features on the surface, especially craters which are detected all over the observed part of the asteroidal surface (44%). In this study, we focus on the physical properties of the craters and particularly theirs diameters and depths which we can compare with others small bodies previously observed. Starting from the first shape model of the asteroid (Besse et al, 2009), we add artificial craters that best match the observations and correlate the simulated images and the real images. The highest correlation yields the diameter and the depth of the craters. The average Depth/Diameter ratio for Steins is 0.12. However, these values are quite heterogeneous and ranged from 0.04 to 0.25. These results are in agreement with previous studies: 0.15 for Ida (Sullivan et al, 1996) and 0.14 for Gaspra (Carr et al,1994). The difference is likely due to the resurfacing of the surface by the large impact that occurs on the south pole of Steins with a diameter of 2100 meters. Craters with extreme values of the Depth/Diameter ratio are located in the vicinity of this large crater and may be related to the large impact. Shallower craters could have been filled by ejecta or regolith displacement, while steeper craters could result from fault basin related to the impact or simply be recent events.
Besse Sebastien
Jorda Laurent
Lamy Philippe L.
Marchi Simone
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