Surface Processes and Sample Return: What Can We Learn About Asteroid Regoliths?

Details Surface Processes and Sample Return: What Can We Learn About Asteroid Regoliths? Surface Processes and Sample Return: What Can We Learn About Asteroid Regoliths?

Jan 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000neas.work....3b&link_type=abstract

Near-Earth Asteroid Sample Return Workshop, p. 3

Physics

Asteroids, Reflectance, Regolith, Spectra, Terrain, Asteroid Missions, Eros Asteroid, Gaspra Asteroid, Ida Asteroid, Albedo

Scientific paper

The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission with 433 Eros and the Galileo mission flybys of asteroids 951 Gaspra and 243 Ida have confirmed that small asteroids can have substantial regolith. There is strong evidence of color and albedo variation associated with regolith processes. On Gaspra, areas with fresh-appearing craters, ejecta of fresh craters, and ridges tend to have 'bluer' reflectance spectra over the visible and near-IR than areas of older, thicker regolith. The bluer areas tend to be brighter than the surrounding 'redder' terrain and their spectra have deeper 1.0 micron bands. On Eros large craters and smaller, fresh-appearing craters are associated with variations in albedo. The darker material appears to drape most of the surface of Eros while the lighter material appears to be stratigraphically below this dark layer. These results indicate that active 'space weathering' processes occur (broadly defined in this context as regolith processes that alter the reflectance spectra of surface material on atmosphereless bodies) on these S-type asteroids with three spectral characteristics: (1) An increase in the spectral red slope; (2) A reduction in the albedo; and (3) Attenuation of the object's spectral 1.0 micron band. These trends are broadly similar to the spectral effects of lunar regolith processes b. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.

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