Boulder sizes and shapes on asteroids: A comparative study of Eros, Itokawa and Ryugu
2021 (English) In: Icarus, ISSN 0019-1035, E-ISSN 1090-2643, Vol. 357, article id 114282Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
In order to understand the geological evolution of asteroids Eros, Itokawa and Ryugu and their collisional history, previous studies investigated boulder size distributions on their surfaces. However, quantitative comparison of these size distributions is hampered by numerous differences between these studies regarding the definition of a boulder's size, measuring technique and the fitting method to determine the power-index of the boulder size distributions. We provide a consistent and coherent model of boulder size distributions by remeasuring the boulders on the entire surfaces of Eros and Itokawa using the Small Body Mapping Tool (SBMT) and combining our observations with the Ryugu data of Michikami et al. (2019). We derived power-indices of the boulder size distributions of −3.25 ± 0.14 for Eros, −3.05 ± 0.14 for Itokawa and −2.65 ± 0.05 for Ryugu. The asteroid with the highest number density of boulders ≥ 5 m turns out to be Ryugu, not Itokawa, as suggested by an earlier study. We show that the appearance of the boulders tends towards more elongated shapes as the size of an asteroid decreases, which can be explained by differences in asteroid gravity and boulder friction angles. Our quantitative observational results indicate that boulder migration preferentially affects smaller boulders, and tends to occur on larger asteroids.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages Elsevier, 2021. Vol. 357, article id 114282
Keywords [en]
Asteroids, Surfaces, Asteroid Eros, Asteroid Itokawa, Asteroid Ryugu, Regoliths
National Category
Aerospace Engineering
Research subject Atmospheric science
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-82254 DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2020.114282 ISI: 000614115900052 Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85106566338 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-82254 DiVA, id: diva2:1516076
Note Validerad;2021;Nivå 2;2021-01-11 (alebob);
Finansiär: JSPS KAKENHI (20K04048), Hypervelocity Impact Facility, ISAS, JAXA
2021-01-112021-01-112023-10-11 Bibliographically approved