Forgot PSJ for August, and it was good. In the vol. 5, #8 issue of the Planetary Science Journal:
Waller, C. D. Espiritu, R. C. Tinsman, C. et al. Science Product Pipelines and Archive Architecture… p. 177 /ad5959
Meyer, A. J. Fuentes-Muñoz, O. Gkolias, I. et al. Munoz, An Earth Encounter as the Cause of Cha…
p. 179 /ad6605
Richardson, D. C. Agrusa, H. F. Barbee, B. et al. The Dynamical State of the Didymos System bef… p. 182 /ad62f5
Jarmak, S. G. Becker, T. M. Woodward, C. E. et al. Estimate of Water and Hydroxyl Abundance o… p. 183 /ad66b9
Wiegert, P. On the Sensitivity of Apophis’s 2029 Earth Approach to Small Asteroid Impacts
p. 184 /ad644d
Lane, M. D. Cloutis, E. A. Clark, R. N. et al. Reflectance spectroscopy of 27 Fine-particulate Miner…
p. 189 /ad5af7
Miyazaki, Y. Stevenson, D. J. The Stability of a Dense Crust Situated on Small Bodies
p. 192 /ad65d2
An update, of sorts, on DART. Pretty deep, it’s the data handling and filing.
Meyer et al. postulate that a NEO- 35107- swung by a planet, close enough to be affected. The effects, if this hypothesis bears out, are visible as an unexpected (chaotic) dynamical state, of one binary asteroid about its partner.
But back to Didymos as a binary asteroid- one whose ‘encounter’ we understand and caused. Richardson et al. give a “before” picture of the Didymos-Dimorphos system, for comparison. Not much longer ‘til Hera launches, and gets us the “after”!
Water. Again, WATER. Jarmak et al. detail their study of (16) Psyche, the target of the Psyche probe, using the James Webb telescope. JW spotted hydroxyl, no doubt. Psyche is a hydrated asteroid, very puzzling for an M-type. Note, though, that the spectral signature of literal water (H2O) is at the threshold of the instrument, not doubtless at all. The usual suspect is that Psyche is ‘dusted’ (or maybe blasted?) by its neighboring carbonaceous chondrites in the outer Main Belt. Jarmak et al. state the possibility that Psyche water may be endogenous, that the body formed further out and migrated (or maybe got slung?) to its present radius.
Not to dwell on disaster talk, but: for Apophis the issue is not farfetched. Wiegert floats the possibility that Apophis may be perturbed into Earth impact (not necessarily 2029, but a later encounter) by getting struck. In effect, a ‘natural DART’ might turn a near-miss into a hit. You’ll be glad to hear this scenario- per Wiegert’s numbers- turns out to be farfetched.
Less drama, more data: Lane et al. do the busywork of studying mineral grains. The more experience we gain with mineral dust/pebbles in the lab, the more we can say about the regolith (‘soil’) up there on the surfaces of asteroids, satellites like Phobos, etc. Lane et al. are searching for spectral signatures that can give away certain minerals, and they’re including nontrivial UV/IR.
Finally, a bit of an oddball paper: Miyazaki and Stevenson postulate a body, differentiated into a crust that’s denser than its own mantle. This is primarily for satellites of the giant planets, but it’s also a path for evolution of comets, and some asteroid scenarios. (1) Ceres, officially an asteroid, has at least some ice/porosity under the surface, and loses small amounts of it like a comet. Odd ball, eh? The universe does not fit neatly into pigeonholes for our mental wholeness.