Space Weathering of Basalt-Covered Asteroids: Vesta an Unlikely Source of the HED Meteorites

Details Space Weathering of Basalt-Covered Asteroids: Vesta an Unlikely Source of the HED Meteorites Space Weathering of Basalt-Covered Asteroids: Vesta an Unlikely Source of the HED Meteorites

Jan 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996eiaf.conf...38w&link_type=abstract

Workshop on Evolution of Igneous Asteroids: Focus on Vesta and the HED Meterorites, p. 38

Physics

1

Asteroid Belts, Basalt, Chondrites, Meteorites, Vesta Asteroid, Weathering, Galileo Spacecraft, Spectra, Pyroxenes

Scientific paper

Space weathering has exerted a dramatic effect on the surfaces of some or most large asteroids. As discussed by Wasson and in detail by Chapman, space weathering has altered the reflection spectra of all large ordinary-chondrite (OC) asteroids. No asteroid with diameter > 40 km shows an OC (Q-type) reflection spectra even though ordinary chondrites are the most abundant meteorites to fall and, based on time-of-fall data, are largely exiting the asteroid belt at the 3:1 period resonance with Jupiter corresponding to an orbital semimajor axis of 2.50 AU Only one large asteroid, 4 Vesta, shows a reflection spectrum having the low-Ca pyroxene absorption near 900 nanometers and neutral colors in the 500-750 nanometer range characteristic of freshly ground basalts (and, with minor differences, of orthopyroxenites). Vesta's spectrum is remarkably well defined, so sharp in fact that Pieters and Binzel speculated that the regolith might be young and Wasson et al. used Galileo observations of variable degrees of weathering of impact features on the S asteroid Ida to estimate that the resurfacing event occurred roughly 10 million years ago.

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