Constraints on the Physical Properties of Main Belt Comet P/2013 R3 From Its Breakup Event

Hirabayashi, Masatoshi; Scheeres, Daniel J.; Sánchez, Diego Paul; Gabriel, T. S. J.

doi:10.1088/2041-8205/789/1/l12

Cited by 74 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In order to find answers, we have used the above described simulation method and set up, and have ran simulations with granular systems with particle-particle tensile strength values of that cover the range of bond number failure types. All of these values are well within the accepted values of tensile strength for observed small NEOs (Holsapple, 2004(Holsapple, , 2010Scheeres et al, 2010;Sánchez and Scheeres, 2014;Rozitis et al, 2014;Hirabayashi et al, 2014;. In general we find that the polar regions of a rapidly rotating body will preferentially retain loose regolith, even in the cohesionless case as previously pointed out in Scheeres (2015); Yu et al (2018) .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Cohesive regolith on fast rotating asteroids

Sánchez

Scheeres

2020

Icarus

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The migration of cohesive regolith on the surface of an otherwise monolithic or strong asteroid is studied using theoretical and simulation models. The theory and simulations show that under an increasing spin rate (such as due to the YORP effect), the regolith covering is preferentially lost across certain regions of the body. For regolith with little or no cohesive strength, failure occurs by landsliding from the mid latitudes of the body at high enough spin rates.As the cohesive strength of the regolith increases, failure occurs by fission of grains (or coherent chunks of grains) across a greater extent of latitudes and eventually will first occur at the equator. As the spin rate is further increased, failure regions migrate from the first failure point to higher and lower latitudes. Eventually failure will encompass the equatorial region, however there always remains a region of high latitudes (around the poles) that will not undergo failure for arbitrarily high spin rates (unless disturbed by some other phenomenon). With these results a scaling law is derived that can be used to determine whether observed asteroids could retain surface regolith grains of a given size. The implications of this for the interpretation of spectral observations of small asteroids and boulder migration on large asteroids are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Cohesive regolith on fast rotating asteroids

Sánchez

Scheeres

2020

Icarus

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“…To emphasize that sublimation is unable to expel particles from the nucleus against inter-particle cohesion, we plot solutions for the sublimation gas pressure from Equation (7) as a function of heliocentric distance in Figure (9). The Figure shows a slightly higher sublimation pressure for CO (solid red curve) than for CO 2 (dashed blue curve), as expected from the greater volatility of CO. Also shown in Figure (9) are two estimates of the cohesive strength inferred for lunar regolith dust (Mitchell et al 1974, Scott andZuckerman 1971), for the fragmented active asteroid P/2013 R3 (Jewitt et al 2014, 2017b, Hirabayashi et al 2014) and for split comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 (Asphaug and Benz 1996), together with strength estimates from Equation (10) for three particle sizes. The sublimation gas pressures, even of CO, are 2 to 3 orders of magnitude too small to overcome the interparticle cohesion in the Sanchez and Scheeres (2014) model, and 4 to 6 orders of magnitude smaller than cohesive strengths measured in the regolith of the Moon, or inferred from break-up of P/2013 R3 and SL9.…”

Section: The Cohesion Bottleneckmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distant Comet C/2017 K2 and the Cohesion Bottleneck

Jewitt

Agarwal

Hui

et al. 2019

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Distant long-period comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) has been outside the planetary region of the solar system for ∼3 Myr, negating the possibility that heat retained from the previous perihelion could be responsible for its activity.This inbound comet is also too cold for water ice to sublimate and too cold for amorphous water ice, if present, to crystallize. C/2017 K2 thus presents an ideal target in which to investigate the mechanisms responsible for activity in distant comets. We have used Hubble Space Telescope to study the comet in the preperihelion heliocentric distance range 13.8 ≤ r H ≤ 15.9 AU. In this range, the coma maintains a logarithmic surface brightness gradient m = −1.010±0.004, consistent with mass loss proceeding in steady-state. The absence of a radiation pressure swept tail indicates that the effective particle size is large (radius 0.1 mm) and the mass loss rate is ∼200 kg s −1 , remarkable for a comet still beyond the orbit of Saturn. Extrapolation of the photometry indicates that activity began in 2012.1±0.5, at r H = 25.9±0.9 AU, where the isothermal blackbody temperature is only T BB = 55 K. This large distance and low temperature suggest that cometary activity is driven by the sublimation of a super-volatile ice (e.g. CO), presumably preserved by K2's long-term residence in the Oort cloud.The mass loss rate can be sustained by CO sublimation from an area 2 km 2 , if located near the hot sub-solar point on the nucleus. However, while the drag force from sublimated CO is sufficient to lift millimeter sized particles against the gravity of the cometary nucleus, it is 10 2 to 10 3 times too small to eject these particles against inter-particle cohesion. Our observations thus require either a new understanding of the physics of inter-particle cohesion or the introduction of another mechanism to drive distant cometary mass loss. We suggest thermal fracture and electrostatic supercharging in this context.

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“…Disruption events represent opportunities to probe the structure and composition of asteroid interiors that are difficult to study otherwise (e.g., Bodewits et al 2014;Hirabayashi et al 2014). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asteroid Family Associations of Active Asteroids

Hsieh

Novaković

Kim

et al. 2018

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We report on the results of a systematic search for associated asteroid families for all active asteroids known to date. We find that 10 out of 12 main-belt comets (MBCs) and 5 out of 7 disrupted asteroids are linked with known or candidate families, rates that have ∼0.1% and ∼6% probabilities, respectively, of occurring by chance, given an overall family association rate of 37% for asteroids in the inner solar system. We find previously unidentified family associations between 238P/Read and the candidate Gorchakov family, 311P/PANSTARRS and the candidate Behrens family, 324P/La Sagra and the Alauda family, 354P/LINEAR and the Baptistina family, P/2013 R3-B (Catalina-PANSTARRS) and the Mandragora family, P/2015 X6 (PANSTARRS) and the Aeolia family, P/2016 G1 (PANSTARRS) and the Adeona family, and P/2016 J1-A/B (PANSTARRS) and the Theobalda family. All MBCs with family associations belong to families that contain asteroids with primitive taxonomic classifications and low average reported albedos (p V 0.10), while disrupted asteroids with family associations belong to families that contain asteroids that span wider ranges of taxonomic types and average reported albedos (0.06 < p V < 0.25). These findings are consistent with MBC activity being closely correlated to composition (i.e., whether an object is likely to contain ice), while disrupted asteroid activity is not as sensitive to composition. Given our results, we describe a sequence of processes by which the formation of young asteroid families could lead to the production of present-day MBCs.

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Constraints on the Physical Properties of Main Belt Comet P/2013 R3 From Its Breakup Event

Cited by 74 publications

References 22 publications

Cohesive regolith on fast rotating asteroids

Cohesive regolith on fast rotating asteroids

Distant Comet C/2017 K2 and the Cohesion Bottleneck

Asteroid Family Associations of Active Asteroids

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