Physical properties of asteroids from collisional studies

Details Physical properties of asteroids from collisional studies Physical properties of asteroids from collisional studies

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..803m&link_type=abstract

European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

The collisional process plays a major role in all phases of Solar System formation and evolution. Asteroid families are the products of the most energetic events in the Main Belt. In recent years, we have been able for the first time to simulate the catastrophic disruption of large asteroids and to reproduce the properties of some asteroid families (e.g. [1], [2]). These simulations not only computed the fragmentation of the asteroid due to the impact of a projectile using a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code or hydrocode ([3]), but also the subsequent mutual gravitational interaction of the generated fragments using a parallel N-body code called pkdgrav [4]. The results of these studies have had great implications for the physical properties of asteroids. We found that when a large asteroid (greater than 1 kilometer in diameter) is disrupted, fragments can reaccumulate and eventually lead to the formation of large gravitational aggregates. This tendency holds true for fragments down to the resolution limit of our simulations (a few hundreds of meters in diameter). Thus, according to our results, it is likely that most bodies that originated from the disruption of a large parent body are not monolithic but rather gravitationally bound aggregates. Asteroids visited by a spacecraft show properties (e.g. bulk density) that support this scenario. This is particularly true for the small asteroid Itokawa (visited by the Japanese JAXA Hayabusa spacecraft), whose properties are interpreted as being consistent with a rubble pile structure.

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