Rubble Pile Asteroids
By Kevin J. Walsh. Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2018
155 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The moniker rubble pile is typically applied to all Solar System bodies >200 m and <∼10 km in diameter; in this size range, there is an abundance of evidence that nearly every object is bound primarily by self-gravity, with significant void space or bulk porosity between irregularly shaped constituent particles. The understanding of this population is derived from wide-ranging population studies of derived shape and spin, decades of observational studies in numerous wavelengths, evidence left behind from impacts on planets and moons, and the in situ study of a few objects via spacecraft flyby or rendezvous. The internal structure, however, which is responsible for the name rubble pile, is never directly observed but belies a violent history. Many or most of the asteroids on near-Earth orbits and those most accessible for rendezvous and in situ study are likely by-products of the continued collisional evolution of the main asteroid belt.
Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Astronomy and Astrophysics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c79e9a9ff6a4b70591704ef3c3c5655beaff05e
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In Aerospace Engineering
- V. Hamilton
- Philip R. Christensen
- J. Bandfield
- William Bottke
- B. Clark
- Michael D. Smith
- H. McSween
- W. Koeppen
In Astronomy and Astrophysics
- V. Hamilton
- Kevin J. Walsh
- Philip R. Christensen
- J. Bandfield
- William Bottke
- R. Binzel
- M. Delbo’
- Michael D. Smith
Citations in the corpus
- Properties of rubble-pile asteroid (101955) Bennu from OSIRIS-REx imaging and thermal analysis (2019, background): “2), cratered, and covered by rocks with a wide range of sizes, consistent with its characterization as a rubble-pile asteroid [17].”