Modeling optical roughness and first-order scattering processes from OSIRIS-REx color images of the rough surface of asteroid (101955) Bennu
Pedro H. Hasselmann, Sonia Fornasier, Maria A. Barucci, Alice Praet, Beth E. Clark, Jian-Yang Li, Dathon R. Golish, Daniella N. DellaGiustina, Jasinghege Don P.… 展开作者
Pedro H. Hasselmann, Sonia Fornasier, Maria A. Barucci, Alice Praet, Beth E. Clark, Jian-Yang Li, Dathon R. Golish, Daniella N. DellaGiustina, Jasinghege Don P. Deshapriya, Xian-Duan Zou, Mike G. Daly, Olivier S. Barnouin, Amy A. Simon, Dante S. Lauretta
The dark asteroid (101955) Bennu studied by NASA\textquoteright s OSIRIS-REx mission has a boulder-rich and apparently dust-poor surface, providing a natural laboratory to investigate the role of single-scattering processes in rough particulate media. Our goal is to define optical roughness and other scattering parameters that may be useful for the laboratory preparation of sample analogs, interpretation of imaging data, and analysis of the sample that will be returned to Earth. We rely on a semi-numerical statistical model aided by digital terrain model (DTM) shadow ray-tracing to obtain scattering parameters at the smallest surface element allowed by the DTM (facets of \textasciitilde{}10 cm). Using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique, we solved the inversion problem on all four-band images of the OSIRIS-REx mission\textquoteright s top four candidate sample sites, for which high-precision laser altimetry DTMs are available. We reconstructed the \emph{a posteriori} probability distribution for each parameter and distinguished primary and secondary solutions. Through the photometric image correction, we found that a mixing of low and average roughness slope best describes Bennu's surface for up to $90^{\circ}$ phase angle. We detected a low non-zero specular ratio, perhaps indicating exposed sub-centimeter mono-crystalline inclusions on the surface. We report an average roughness RMS slope of $27_{-5}^{\circ+1}$, a specular ratio of $2.6_{-0.8}^{+0.1}\%$, an approx. single-scattering albedo of $4.64_{-0.09}^{+0.08}\%$ at 550 nm, and two solutions for the back-scatter asymmetric factor, $ξ^{(1)}=-0.360\pm0.030$ and $ξ^{(2)}=-0.444\pm0.020$, for all four sites altogether.
The REgolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) instrument on board NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu is a Class-D student collaboration experiment designed to detect fluoresced X-rays from the asteroid's surface to measure elemental abundances. In July and November 2019 REXIS collected ~615 hours of integrated exposure time of Bennu's sun-illuminated surface from terminator orbits. As reported in Hoak et al. (2021), the REXIS data do not contain a clear signal of X-ray fluorescence from the asteroid, in part due to the low incident solar X-ray flux during periods of observation.…
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft encountered the asteroid (101955) Bennu on December 3, 2018, and has since acquired extensive data from the payload of scientific instruments on board. In 2019, the OSIRIS-REx team selected primary and backup sample collection sites, called Nightingale and Osprey, respectively. On October 20, 2020, OSIRIS-REx successfully collected material from Nightingale. In this work, we apply an unsupervised machine learning classification through the K-Means algorithm to spectrophotometrically characterize the surface of Bennu, and in particular Nightingale and Osprey. We first …
Asteroids and other small bodies in the solar system tend to have irregular shapes, owing to their low gravity. This irregularity does not only apply to the topology, but also to the underlying geology, potentially containing regions of different densities and materials. The topology can be derived from optical observations, while the mass density distribution of an object is only observable, to some extent, in its gravitational field. In a companion paper, we presented geodesyNets, a neural network approach to infer the mass density distribution of an object from measurements of its gravitati…
A small number of anomalously bright boulders on the near-Earth, rubble-pile asteroid (101955) Bennu were recently identified as eucritic material originating from asteroid (4) Vesta. Building on this discovery, we explored the global presence of exogenic boulders on Bennu. Our analysis focused on boulders larger than 1 m that show the characteristic 1-micron pyroxene absorption band in the four-color MapCam data from the OSIRIS-REx mission. We confirm the presence of exogenic boulders similar to eucrites and find that mixtures of eucrites with carbonaceous material is also a possible composit…
Unusual polarimetric properties of (101955) Bennu: similarities with F-class asteroids and cometary bodies
我们已经获得了小行星（101955）Bennu，大概是一个原始的近地天体（NEO），是美国宇航局的样本返回任务OSIRIS-REx的目标偏振测量。在我们的观测活动中，Bennu在各种照明条件下都可以从地球上看到，相位角在16到57度之间。Bennu与最近观测到的（3200）Phaethon和（152679）1998 KU 2一起，是在相位角间隔很宽的情况下以偏振方式观测到的原始近地天体的唯一实例。根据我们的偏振数据，我们建议，Bennu属于不寻常的F分类在80年代定义的类。根据之前的工作，F类包括具有彗星特征的物体。这一事实对于解释OSIRIS-REx探测该天体的结果非常重要。从偏振测量，我们还得到了Bennu的几何常数的估计：0.059 +/- 0.003。
OSIRIS-REx: Sample Return from Asteroid (101955) Bennu
2011年5月，美国宇航局选择了起源、光谱解释、资源识别和安全-风化层探测器（OSIRIS-REx）小行星样本返回任务作为新前沿计划的第三个任务。另外两个新前沿任务是新视野号，它在2015年7月的一次飞越中探索了冥王星，并将于2019年1月1日飞越柯伊伯带物体2014 MU 69，以及朱诺号，这是一个正在研究木星起源，演化和内部结构的轨道任务。该航天器于2016年9月8日美国东部时间下午7点05分乘坐联合发射联盟Atlas V 411进化型一次性运载火箭前往近地小行星（101955）Bennu，进行了为期七年的旅程，从Bennu返回样本。该航天器处于一个向外巡航的轨道上，将于2018年8月与Bennu会合。航天器上的科学仪器将对Bennu进行调查，测量其物理，地质和化学特性，研究小组将利用这些数据在表面选择一个地点，收集至少60克的小行星风化层。该小组还将分析遥感数据，对样本地点进行详细研究，评估Bennus资源潜力，改进其与地球撞击概率的估计，并为在这颗小行星上收集的大量天文数据集提供地面实况数据。该航天器将于2021年离开Bennu，并于2023年9月24日将样本返回犹他州测试和训练靶场（UTTR）。
The NASA mission OSIRIS-REx has been observing near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu in close proximity since December 2018. In this work, we investigate spectral phase reddening -- that is, the variation of spectral slope with phase angle -- on Bennu using spectra acquired by the OSIRIS-REx Visible and InfraRed Spectrometer (OVIRS) covering a phase angle range of 8-130$^{o}$. We investigate this process at the global scale and for some localized regions of interest (ROIs), including boulders, craters, and the designated sample collection sites of the OSIRIS-REx mission. Bennu has a globally nega…
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is the third NASA New Frontiers Program mission and arrived at the near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu in December 2018. Following completion of sample collection in October 2020, otherwise known as Touch-And-Go (TAG), the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was set to verify its collected sample mass requirement (> 60g of material). The thoroughly tested Sample Mass Measurement (SMM) method was to be used for this verification. Imaging of the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM…
From Jan. 6, 2019 to Feb. 18, 2019, OSIRIS-REx observed asteroid (101955) Bennu ejecting 11 plumes of dust, of which part is escaping and another part is re-captured by the asteroid. The relative magnitudes of the typical forces acting on the emitted dust are quite different from the environments of the planets and other minor planets in the solar system. Here we show that ejected dust grains from the surface of Bennu can be caught in the gravitational field of Bennu. To this end, we calculated numerically the trajectories of dust grains of various sizes, from the 0.1mum to the ten millimeter …
Exploration of asteroid (101955) Bennu by the OSIRIS-REx mission has provided an in-depth look at this rubble-pile near-Earth asteroid. In particular, the measured gravity field and the detailed shape model of Bennu indicate significant heterogeneities in its interior structure, compatible with a lower density at its center. Here we combine gravity inversion methods with a statistical rubble-pile model to determine the density and size-frequency distribution (SFD) index of the rubble that constitutes Bennu. The best-fitting models indicate that the SFD of the interior is consistent with that o…
Physical Analysis of Bennu Samples Reveals Regolith Production by Collisional Disruption on Near-Earth Asteroids
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室）；Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学月球与行星实验室）；Vatican Observatory（梵蒂冈天文台）；Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute, Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学霍普金斯极端材料研究所）；Jacobs-JETS, NASA Johnson Space Center（NASA约翰逊航天中心雅各布斯-JETS）；University of Calgary（卡尔加里大学）；EAPS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院地球、大气与行星科学系）；Arizona State University（亚利桑那州立大学）；National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution（史密森尼学会国家航空和航天博物馆）；Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES), NASA Johnson Space Center（NASA约翰逊航天中心天体物质研究与探索科学部）；Planetary Science Institute（行星科学研究所）；INAF, Astronomical Observatory of Padova（意大利国家天体物理研究所帕多瓦天文台）；University of Rochester（罗切斯特大学）；Southwest Research Institute（西南研究院）；Department of Geology, Rowan University（罗恩大学地质系）；Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, American Museum of Natural History（美国自然历史博物馆地球与行星科学系）
Proximity observations by OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 provided clues on the shape evolution processes of the target asteroids, (101955) Bennu and (162173) Ryugu. Their oblate shapes with equatorial ridges, or the so-called top shapes, may have evolved due to their rotational conditions at present and in the past. Different shape evolution scenarios were previously proposed; Bennu's top shape may have been driven by surface processing, while Ryugu's may have been developed due to large deformation. These two scenarios seem to be inconsistent. Here, we revisit the structural analyses in earlier wor…
Using the multi-band imager MapCam onboard the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft, we identified 77 instances of proposed exogenic materials distributed globally on the surface of the B-type asteroid (101955) Bennu. We identified materials as exogenic on the basis of an absorption near 1 um that is indicative of anhydrous silicates. The exogenic materials are spatially resolved by the telescopic camera PolyCam. All such materials are brighter than their surroundings, and they are expressed in a variety of morphologi…
Asteroid Ryugu and asteroid Bennu, which were recently visited by spacecraft Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, respectively, are spinning top-shaped rubble piles. Other axisymmetric top-shaped near-Earth asteroids have been observed with ground-based radar, most of which rotate near breakup rotation periods of ~ 3 hours. This suggests that rotation-induced deformation of asteroids through rotational spinup produces top shapes. Although some previous simulations using the Discrete Element Method showed that spinup of rubble piles may produce oblate top shapes, it is still unclear what kinds of conditio…
The two on-going sample return space missions, Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx are going to return to Earth asteroid regolith from the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroids Ryugu and Bennu. The two main processes that lead to regolith production are the micrometeorite bombardment and the thermal cracking. Here we report the production of a weak simulant material, analogue to carbonaceous meteorites with a CM-like composition, following the preliminary compositional results for Bennu and Ryugu. This asteroid simulant has compressive and flexural strength 1.8+/-0.17 and 0.7+/-0.07 MPa, respectively. The th…
The exploration of small body asteroids provides direct access to the primitive building blocks of our solar system. Sample and return missions enable chemical and radioisotope studies which not only provide evidence for the formation of the solar system, but also a basic understanding of where resources might be found for future exploitation. The touch-down and sample techniques established by Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx accomplish this mission by physically touching down on the asteroid and collecting samples into a basket extended via a probe from the bottom of the spacecraft. This technique …
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency（宇宙科学研究所）；Rowan University（罗文大学）；Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学）；Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, American Museum of Natural History（美国自然历史博物馆）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）
Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are so far the only available samples representing carbon-rich asteroids and in order to allow future comparison with samples returned by missions such as Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-Rex, is important to understand their physical properties. Future characterization of asteroid primitive classes, some of them targeted by sample-return missions, requires a better understanding of their mineralogy, the consequences of the exposure to space weathering, and how both affect the reflectance behavior of these objects. In this paper, the reflectance spectra of two chemically…
The surfaces of airless bodies such as asteroids are exposed to many phenomena that can alter their physical properties. Bennu, the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission, has demonstrated how complex the surface of a small body can be. In 2019 November, the potentially hazardous asteroid 2015 JD1 experienced a close approach of 0.0331 au from the Earth. We present results of the physical characterization of 2015 JD1 based on ground-based radar, spectroscopy, and photometric observations acquired during 2019 November. Radar polarimetry measurements from the Arecibo Observatory indicate a morphologic…
