Impact ejecta and crater formation on asteroid surfaces

Asteroids in the Solar System are numerous and have varied composition. Analysis of impact crater sizes and morphologies on asteroids can provide a direct diagnosis of the surface material properties and near-surface structures. This thesis describes numerical simulations of impacts into low-gravity asteroid surfaces using the iSALE shock physics code to inform this diagnosis. Asteroids may pose a future catastrophic threat to Earth and to avoid it, the incoming asteroid can be deflected by a spacecraft impact. However, the efficiency of the deflection is determined by target properties. This work considered different target scenarios to determine the sensitivity of crater morphology, ejecta mass-velocity distribution and momentum transferred, to asteroid surface properties and shallow structures. For homogeneous targets, the surface cohesion, initial porosity, and internal friction were found to greatly influence ejecta mass/velocity distributions and the amount an asteroid can be deflected. In a two-layer target scenario, the presence of a less porous, stronger lower layer can cause both amplification and reduction of ejected mass and momentum relative to the homogeneous case. Impacts into targets with decreasing porosity with depth only produced an enhancement in the ejected momentum for sharp exponential decreases in porosity. Using reasonable estimates for the material properties of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) asteroid target, the simulations show that the ejecta produced from the impact can enhance the deflection 2 to 4 times. Simulations of impacts into possible target structures on Psyche show large diversity in possible crater morphologies that the ‘Psyche’ mission could encounter. If Psyche’s interior is homogeneous, then the mission will find simple bowl-shaped craters, with a depth-diameter ratio diagnostic of rock or iron. If Psyche has a layered structure, the spacecraft could find craters with more complex morphologies, e.g. concentric or flat-floored craters. Based on 3-4 proposed large craters on Psyche’s surface, model size-frequency distributions suggest that Psyche could be at least 3 billion years old if rocky and more than 4 billion years old if metal-rich.Open Acces

Heliocentric Effects of the DART Mission on the (65803) Didymos Binary Asteroid System

The Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) is NASA’s first kinetic impact–based asteroid deflection mission. The DART spacecraft will act as a projectile during a hypervelocity impact on Dimorphos, the secondary asteroid in the (65803) Didymos binary system, and alter its mutual orbital period. The initial momentum transfer between the DART spacecraft and Dimorphos is enhanced by the ejecta flung off the surface of Dimorphos. This exchange is characterized within the system by the momentum enhancement parameter, β, and on a heliocentric level by its counterpart, βe. The relationship between β and the physical characteristics of Dimorphos is discussed here. A nominal set of Dimorphos physical parameters from the design reference asteroid and impact circumstances from the design reference mission are used to initialize the ejecta particles for dynamical propagation. The results of this propagation are translated into a gradual momentum transfer onto the Didymos system barycenter. A high-quality solar system propagator is then used to produce precise estimates of the post-DART encounters between Didymos and Earth by generating updated close approach maps. Results show that even for an unexpectedly high βe, a collision between the Didymos system and Earth is practically excluded in the foreseeable future. A small but significant difference is found in modeling the overall momentum transfer when individual ejecta particles escape the Didymos system, as opposed to imparting the ejecta momentum as a single impulse at impact. This difference has implications for future asteroid deflection campaigns, especially when it is necessary to steer asteroids away from gravitational keyholes

Constraining surface properties of asteroid (162173) Ryugu from numerical simulations of Hayabusa2 mission impact experiment.

The Hayabusa2 mission impact experiment on asteroid Ryugu created an unexpectedly large crater. The associated regime of low-gravity, low-strength cratering remained largely unexplored so far, because these impact conditions cannot be re-created in laboratory experiments on Earth. Here we show that the target cohesion may be very low and the impact probably occurred in the transitional cratering regime, between strength and gravity. For such conditions, our numerical simulations are able to reproduce the outcome of the impact on Ryugu, including the effects of boulders originally located near the impact point. Consistent with most recent analysis of Ryugu and Bennu, cratering scaling-laws derived from our results suggest that surfaces of small asteroids must be very young. However, our results also show that the cratering efficiency can be strongly affected by the presence of a very small amount of cohesion. Consequently, the varying ages of different geological surface units on Ryugu may be due to the influence of cohesion

Spacecraft Geometry Effects on Kinetic Impactor Missions

The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission will impact a spacecraft on the secondary (Dimorphos) of the binary asteroid system Didymos in 2022 September, with the goal of altering the orbital period of Dimorphos about Didymos sufficiently to be observed from ground-based observations. Numerical impact modeling is a crucial component in understanding the outcome of the DART experiment, and while many have investigated the effects of target properties, such as material strength and porosity (which remain unknown), an often overlooked factor is the importance of accurately representing the spacecraft itself in such models. Most impact modeling to date has considered simple impactor geometries such as a solid uniform sphere, but in reality the spacecraft is a complex shape full of different components, open spaces, and thin walled structures. At a minimum, a simple solid representation underestimates the surface area of the impact: for a small body such as Dimorphos (approximately 160 m in diameter), the difference between a spacecraft spanning 20 m (including solar arrays) impacting and a sub-1 m idealized shape may be important. In this paper, we compare models impacting high-fidelity models of the spacecraft based on the CAD geometry with various simplified impactors, in order to assess the potential importance of this effect. We find that the difference between the simplest impactor geometries (such as a uniform sphere) and the real spacecraft is measurable, and has an interesting dependence on the material properties of the asteroid itself

Momentum Enhancement during Kinetic Impacts in the Low-intermediate-strength Regime: Benchmarking and Validation of Impact Shock Physics Codes

In 2022 September, the DART spacecraft (NASA’s contribution to the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) collaboration) will impact the asteroid Dimorphos, the secondary in the Didymos system. The crater formation and material ejection will affect the orbital period. In 2027, Hera (ESA’s contribution to AIDA) will investigate the system, observe the crater caused by DART, and characterize Dimorphos. Before Hera’s arrival, the target properties will not be well-constrained. The relationships between observed orbital change and specific target properties are not unique, but Hera’s observations will add additional constraints for the analysis of the impact event, which will narrow the range of feasible target properties. In this study, we use three different shock physics codes to simulate momentum transfer from impactor to target and investigate the agreement between the results from the codes for well-defined target materials. In contrast to previous studies, care is taken to use consistent crushing behavior (e.g., distension as a function of pressure) for a given porosity for all codes. First, we validate the codes against impact experiments into a regolith simulant. Second, we benchmark the codes at the DART impact scale for a range of target material parameters (10%–50% porosity, 1.4–100 kPa cohesion). Aligning the crushing behavior improves the consistency of the derived momentum enhancement between the three codes to within +/−5% for most materials used. Based on the derived mass–velocity distributions from all three codes, we derive scaling parameters that can be used for studies of the ejecta curtain

Momentum transfer from the DART mission kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos

The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission performed a kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, at 23:14 UTC on 26 September 2022 as a planetary defence test1. DART was the first hypervelocity impact experiment on an asteroid at size and velocity scales relevant to planetary defence, intended to validate kinetic impact as a means of asteroid deflection. Here we report a determination of the momentum transferred to an asteroid by kinetic impact. On the basis of the change in the binary orbit period2, we find an instantaneous reduction in Dimorphos’s along-track orbital velocity component of 2.70 ± 0.10 mm s−1, indicating enhanced momentum transfer due to recoil from ejecta streams produced by the impact3,4. For a Dimorphos bulk density range of 1,500 to 3,300 kg m−3, we find that the expected value of the momentum enhancement factor, β, ranges between 2.2 and 4.9, depending on the mass of Dimorphos. If Dimorphos and Didymos are assumed to have equal densities of 2,400 kg m−3, β=3.61+0.19−0.25(1σ). These β values indicate that substantially more momentum was transferred to Dimorphos from the escaping impact ejecta than was incident with DART. Therefore, the DART kinetic impact was highly effective in deflecting the asteroid Dimorphos

Pre-encounter predictions of DART impact ejecta behavior and observability

We overview various efforts within the DART Investigation Team’s Ejecta Working Group to predict the characteristics, quantity, dynamical behavior, and observability of DART impact ejecta. We discuss various methodologies for simulation of the impact/cratering process with their advantages and drawbacks in relation to initializing ejecta for subsequent dynamical propagation through and away from the Didymos system. We discuss the most relevant forces acting on ejecta once decoupled from Dimorphos’s surface and highlight various software packages we have developed and used to dynamically simulate ejecta under the action of those forces. With some additional software packages, we explore the influence of additional perturbing effects, such as interparticle collisions within true N-body codes and nonspherical and rotating particles’ interplay with solar radiation pressure. We find that early-timescale and close-proximity ejecta evolution is highly sensitive to some of these effects (e.g., collisions) while relatively insensitive to other factors. We present a methodology for turning the time-evolving size- and spatially discretized number density field output from ejecta simulations into synthetic images for multiple platforms/cameras over wide-ranging vantage points and timescales. We present such simulated images and apply preliminary analyses to them for nominal and off-nominal cases bracketing realistic total mass of ejecta and ejecta cumulative size–frequency distribution slope. Our analyses foreshadow the information content we may be able to extract from the actual images taken during and after the DART encounter by both LICIACube and Earth-vicinity telescopes.ANII: FCE_1_2019_1_15645

Dimorphos's Orbit Period Change and Attitude Perturbation due to Its Reshaping after the DART Impact

On 2022 September 26 (UTC), NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission achieved a successful impact on Dimorphos, the secondary component of the near-Earth binary asteroid system (65803) Didymos. Subsequent ground-based observations suggest a significant reshaping of Dimorphos, with its equatorial axis ratio changing from 1.06 to ∼1.3. Here we report the effects of this reshaping event on Dimorphos's orbit and attitude. Given the reported reshaping magnitude, our mutual dynamics simulations show that approximately 125 s of the observed 33 minute orbit period change after the DART impact may have resulted from reshaping. This value, however, is sensitive to the precise values of Dimorphos's post-impact axis ratios and may vary by up to 2 times that amount, reaching approximately 250 s within the current uncertainty range. While the rotational state of the body is stable at the currently estimated axis ratios, even minor changes in these ratios or the introduction of shape asymmetry can render its attitude unstable. The perturbation to Dimorphos's orbital and rotational state delivered by the impact directly, combined with any reshaping, leads to a strong possibility for a tumbling rotation state. To accurately determine the momentum enhancement factor (β) through measurements by the European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft and to evaluate the effectiveness of the kinetic deflection technique for future planetary defense initiatives, the effects of reshaping should not be overlooked.This work was supported in part by the DART mission, NASA contract 80MSFC20D0004 to JHU/APL. R.N. acknowledges support from NASA/FINESST (NNH20ZDA001N). S.D.R. and M.J. acknowledge support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (project number 200021_207359). P.M. acknowledges funding support from the French Space Agency CNES and The University of Tokyo. P.P. acknowledges support from the grant Agency of the Czech Republic, grant 23-04946S. S.R.S. acknowledges support from the DART Participating Scientist Program, grant No. 80NSSC22K0318. A.C.B. and P.Y.L. acknowledge funding by the NEO-MAPP project 717 GA 870377, EC H2020-SPACE-718 2018-2020/H2020-SPACE-2019, and by MICINN (Spain) PGC2021, PID2021-125883NB-C21. P.Y.L. acknowledges funding from the European Space Agency OSIP contract N.4000136043/21/NL/GLC/my. A portion of this work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (No. 80NM0018D0004)

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART): Structural and Dynamic Interactions between Asteroidal Elements of Binary Asteroid (65803) Didymos

Abstract NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is the first full-scale planetary defense mission. The target is the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, in which the smaller component Dimorphos (∼164 m equivalent diameter) orbits the larger component Didymos (∼780 m equivalent diameter). The DART spacecraft will impact Dimorphos, changing the system’s mutual orbit by an amount that correlates with DART's kinetic deflection capability. The spacecraft collision with Dimorphos creates an impact crater, which reshapes the body. Also, some particles ejected from the DART impact site on Dimorphos eventually reach Didymos. Because Didymos’s rapid spin period (2.26 hr) may be close to its stability limit for structural failure, the ejecta reaching Didymos may induce surface disturbance on Didymos. While large uncertainties exist, nonnegligible reshaping scenarios on Didymos and Dimorphos are possible if certain conditions are met. Our analysis shows that given a surface slope uncertainty on Dimorphos of 45°, with no other information about its local topography, and if the DART-like impactor is treated as spherical, the ejecta cone crosses Didymos with speeds ≳14 m s−1 in 13% of simulations. Additional work is necessary to determine the amount of mass delivered to Didymos from the DART impact and whether the amount of kinetic energy delivered is sufficient to overcome cohesive forces in those cases. If nonnegligible (but small) reshaping occurs for either of these asteroids, the resulting orbit perturbation and reshaping are measurable by Earth-based observations.</jats:p