Imaging of Small-Scale Features on 433 Eros from NEAR: Evidence for a Complex Regolith

Veverka, J.; Thomas, P. C.; Robinson, M. S.; Murchie, S. L.; Chapman, C. R.; Bell, Maureen; Harch, A.; Merline, W. J.; Bell, James F.; Bussey, B.; Carcich, B.; Cheng, A.; Clark, B. E.; Domingue, D. L.; Dunham, David; Farquhar, Robert W.; Gaffey, M. J.; Hawkins, E.; Izenberg, N. R.; Joseph, J.; Kirk, R.; Li, H.; Lucey, P. G.; Malin, M. C.; McFadden, L. A.; Miller, James; Owen, W. M.; Peterson, C.; Prockter, L. M.; Warren, J.; Wellnitz, D. D.; Williams, Bobby G.; Yeomans, Donald K.

doi:10.1126/science.1058651

Cited by 164 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This regolith layer displays evidence of downslope movement in several forms (1)(2)(3)(4): debris aprons at the base of steep slopes, bright streaks of freshly exposed material on crater walls, the pooling of regolith in topographic lows, a large number of degraded craters, and a scarcity of craters less than È100 m in diameter. One plausible explanation for these phenomena is seismic reverberation of the asteroid after impact events, which is potentially capable of destabilizing slopes, causing regolith to migrate downslope, and degrading or erasing small craters (1)(2)(3)(4)(5). Impact-induced seismic shaking of an asteroid in the 1 to 100 km size range is an attractive mechanism for three reasons.…”

Section: Impact-induced Seismic Activity On Asteroid 433 Eros: a Surfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact-Induced Seismic Activity on Asteroid 433 Eros: A Surface Modification Process

Richardson

Melosh

Greenberg

2004

Science

145

149

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Section: Impact-induced Seismic Activity On Asteroid 433 Eros: a Surfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact-Induced Seismic Activity on Asteroid 433 Eros: A Surface Modification Process

Richardson

Melosh

Greenberg

2004

Science

145

149

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“…Their primary production hypothesis is supported by a discovery of the same steep slope segment in the crater size-frequency distribution on the asteroid Gaspra (Neukum and Ivanov, 1994;Chapman et al, 1996) and in the sizefrequency distribution of Earth-crossing asteroids (Rabinowitz et al, 1994). On the other hand, the crater sizefrequency distribution on Eros shows β greater than −2 (Veverka et al, 2001). Therefore the size-frequency distribution of primary production requires further investigation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing hypotheses for the origin of steep slope of lunar size-frequency distribution for small craters

Namiki

Honda

2014

Earth Planet Sp

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The crater size-frequency distribution of lunar maria is characterized by the change in slope of the population between 0.3 and 4 km in crater diameter. The origin of the steep segment in the distribution is not well understood. Nonetheless, craters smaller than a few km in diameter are widely used to estimate the crater retention age for areas so small that the number of larger craters is statistically insufficient. Future missions to the moon, which will obtain high resolution images, will provide a new, large data set of small craters. Thus it is important to review current hypotheses for their distributions before future missions are launched. We examine previous and new arguments and data bearing on the admixture of endogenic and secondary craters, horizontal heterogeneity of the substratum, and the size-frequency distribution of the primary production function. The endogenic crater and heterogeneous substratum hypotheses are seen to have little evidence in their favor, and can be eliminated. The primary production hypothesis fails to explain a wide variation of the size-frequency distribution of Apollo panoramic photographs. The secondary craters are likely the major source of the steepening of the distribution. It is ambiguous, however, which primary craters can produce sufficiently numerous secondary craters. The regional variation of the sizefrequency distributions shows that few large impacts produce enough secondary craters to affect the distributions in the surrounding area. We emphasize that a crater size-frequency distribution of small craters on the moon should not be taken as an indication of the surface age. More data obtained from future lunar missions should be viewed in this context, and continued to be examined for further insight into the possible formation mechanism for secondary craters.

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“…High resolution imaging of the surfaces of these objects provided detail information on crater morphology, distribution and extent of burial of ejecta blocks and downslope movement of material along crater walls or inclined slopes. Analysis of these features suggest the presence of a few tens to several tens of meters of regolith consisting of loosely consolidated fine material as well as meter-sized blocks on these objects (Carr et al, 1994;Sullivan et al, 1996;Veverka et al, 1997Veverka et al, , 2001Thomas et al, 2000). While the spacecraft observations confirm the presence of regolith in moderate-sized asteroids, the regolith thickness in such objects appears to be much larger than model predictions.…”

Section: Asteroid Regolith Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 40%

Interaction of energetic particles and dust grains with asteroidal surfaces

Goswami

2014

Earth Planet Sp

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Low energy solar wind (SW) and solar energetic particles (SEP) interact with material exposed on the surface of planetary objects devoid of an atmosphere and a global magnetic field such as the Moon and the asteroids. Micrometeoroid impacts will produce microcraters on samples exposed on the surfaces of these bodies and also cause microscale erosion and at times catastrophic rupture of the target rocks and soil grains. The impacting flux of meteoroids thus controls the effective SW and SEP exposure durations of samples on the lunar and asteroidal surfaces. The lunar samples contain abundant records of energetic particle interactions and micrometeoroid impacts while such records found in gas-rich meteorites can be considered to be representative of asteroidal samples. These records allow us to infer the composition and intensity of SW and SEP in the past as well as surface dynamical processes operating on the Moon and asteroids at different epochs. However, unlike the lunar records that span the time interval from the present to several billion years in the past, the asteroidal (gas-rich meteorite) records provide information only for some distant epochs in the past. We do not have much information about the contemporary energetic particle and dust grain environment in the asteroidal region. The Muses-C mission, that will bring back near surface samples from an asteroid, will be extremely important in this regard.

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Imaging of Small-Scale Features on 433 Eros from NEAR: Evidence for a Complex Regolith

Cited by 164 publications

References 15 publications

Impact-Induced Seismic Activity on Asteroid 433 Eros: A Surface Modification Process

Impact-Induced Seismic Activity on Asteroid 433 Eros: A Surface Modification Process

Testing hypotheses for the origin of steep slope of lunar size-frequency distribution for small craters

Interaction of energetic particles and dust grains with asteroidal surfaces

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