Low Perihelion Near Earth Asteroids

Campins, Humberto; Fernandez, Yan; Kelley, Michael; Licandro, Javier
Referencia bibliográfica

Spitzer Proposal ID #40322

Advertised on:
5
2007
Número de autores
4
Número de autores del IAC
0
Número de citas
1
Número de citas referidas
0
Descripción
The primary goal of this project is to characterize the surface composition (and other properties such as radius, albedo and thermal inertia) of a sample of low perihelion Near- Earth Asteroids (NEAs), based on their 7 to 14 micron spectrum. NEAs with low perihelion distances represent a unique laboratory in which to study the effects of thermal processing on asteroid surfaces. We will study the mineral and organic composition of our targets and we will search for correlations between the mid-infrared spectral characteristics and other properties such as size, albedo, rotational properties and orbital characteristics. Understanding how asteroid surfaces change as a result of exposure to high temperatures will help constrain models of the compositional and thermal environment in the region of the protoplanetary disk where the asteroids formed. Part of the motivation to study the low perihelion NEAs comes from the results of our recent study of 3200 Phaethon (Licandro et al. 2007), where we found indications that the surface mineralogy of this low perihelion NEA may have been altered by the perihelion thermal pulse. Our total time request is 10.1 hours.