Sample Return from Small Asteroids: Mission Impossible?

Details Sample Return from Small Asteroids: Mission Impossible? Sample Return from Small Asteroids: Mission Impossible?

Jan 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000neas.work...51w&link_type=abstract

Near-Earth Asteroid Sample Return Workshop, p. 51

Physics

Asteroids, Rotation, Size (Dimensions), Light Curve

Scientific paper

The extensive study of asteroid lightcurves has shown that they typically rotate with periods from a few hours to a few tens of hours. Though there have been a few markedly longer rotation periods observed (1220 Crocus has a period of approximately 737 hours), the existence of significantly faster rotation rates has only been recently demonstrated. The discovery of 1998 KY26, and the identification of its 10.7 minute spin period and the earlier observations of 1995 HM and its 97.2 minute period, showed that very fast rotation rates were possible for small asteroids. Asteroids 1998 WB2, 1999 SF10, and 1999 TY2 have recently been demonstrated to be very rapidly rotating as well. We have performed lightcurve observations and analysis of four more fast rotators, 2000 AG6, 2000 D08, and 2000 EB 14, and 2000 HB24. Their periods are 4.56, 10.44, 107.4, and 13.05 minutes respectively. The common characteristic of the nine known fast-rotating objects is their small size; all of them are less than about 200 m in diameter. Objects smaller than about 200 m have never been observed to have periods longer than 2.2 hours, and objects larger than a few hundred meters in size have never been observed to rotate with periods shorter than 2.2 hours. This strong segregation of spin rates has been shown in this abstract and related work. Theoretical work also suggests that a limiting rotation period of about 2.2 hours separates objects 200 meters and smaller from larger bodies. The physical interpretation for this segregation of spin rates is that objects smaller than a few hundred meters in diameter are all intact, internally monolithic bodies that retain the tensile strength to rotate at extreme rates.

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