Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufm.p53c1537i&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #P53C-1537
Physics
[5420] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Impact Phenomena, Cratering, [6035] Planetary Sciences: Comets And Small Bodies / Orbital And Rotational Dynamics, [6205] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Asteroids
Scientific paper
Recent lunar crater counting studies have revealed an asymmetric distribution of rayed craters on the lunar surface. The asymmetry is related to the synchronous rotation of the Moon, and there is a higher density of rayed craters on the leading hemisphere compared with the trailing hemisphere. Here we report the progress in our study to test the hypotheses that (i) the population of near-Earth asteroids is the source of the impactors that have made the rayed craters, and (ii) that impacts by this projectile population account quantitatively for the observed asymmetry. We carried out numerical simulations of the orbital evolution of a large number of test particles representing near-Earth asteroids in order to determine directly their impact flux on the Moon. In a previous study, we reported results based on the debiased NEA model of Bottke et al.(2002), where we found that the theoretical model yields a smaller asymmetry than is observed on the Moon. A possible reason for the discrepancy is that the population of NEAs having low relative velocity with respect to the Earth-Moon system is underestimated in the debiased NEA model. In the present work, we report results based on a second debiased NEA model (Morbidelli, 2006), and we compare these with our previous study. Our results provide possible constraints on the dynamical characteristics of the near-Earth asteroid population and may help to improve theoretical models of this population.
Ito Tetsuya
Malhotra Renu
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