Spectroscopic Differences Between HED Meteorites and V-type Asteroids in the Inner Main Belt

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The majority of V-type asteroids and HED meteorites are thought to be genetically related to one another (Consolmagno & Drake 1977) as collisional fragments from the surface of the large basaltic asteroid 4 Vesta (Binzel & Xu 1993). We have analyzed a statistically significant sample of near-infrared spectra (0.7-2.5 micron) of V-type asteroids and HED meteorites to compare the spectral properties of these two populations. More than 30 V-type asteroids in the inner Main Belt (a < 2.5 AU) were observed with SpeX at NASA's IRTF and spectra of 75 HED meteorites were retrieved from the Brown RELAB database. The centers and areas of the 1- and 2-micron pyroxene-olivine absorption bands (which are characteristic of planetary basalts) were measured for both the asteroidal and meteoritic data sets. These measurements reveal distinct spectroscopic differences between these populations, namely the band area ratios (Cloutis et al. 1986) measured from the asteroidal spectra are significantly larger than those of the meteorites. A variety of phenomena could be responsible for this discrepancy: terrestrial weathering of the meteorites, temperature differences between the asteroids ( 180 K) and the meteorites ( 300 K) at the time of observation, differences in grain size between the asteroid regoliths and meteorite samples, uncorrected systematics related to the telescopic observations, compositional differences, or weathering of the asteroid surfaces due to exposure to the space environment. We will present arguments to suggest that only these last two possibilities are plausible. Understanding the cause of this discrepancy will be important to the interpretation of data from the Visible and Infrared Spectrograph onboard the Dawn spacecraft, which will reach Vesta in the summer of 2011.

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