Material properties and momentum transfer uncertainty for DART
- Author(s)
- Thomas I. Maindl, Christoph M. Schäfer, Siegfried Eggl
- Abstract
Kinetic impactors are one possible option to deflect sub kilometer sized asteroids that may collide with planet Earth. The momentum delivered by such a spacecraft would change the potentially hazardous asteroid's orbit so as to avoid an impact on our home world. Near-Earth asteroids with diameters the order of 100m are believed to be very common and consist of a wide variety of materials with varying bulk densities. Akinetic impact on such targets would not only entail a direct momentum transfer from the spacecraft to the target, but also post-impact effects caused by ejected material resulting in a momentum transfer efficiency ß>1. The latter is only weakly constrained, however. We study the momentum transfer onto an asteroid after it is hit by a kinetic impactor comparable to the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission concept's projectile. The notional target is an asteroid similar in size to the secondary body of the binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos (approx. 150m) consisting of a variety of different materials such as solid basaltic rock, carbonaceous chondrite, porous rock, ablend of porous rock and water ice, and - as an extreme case - solidiron. Impact simulations are conducted within a state-of-the-art 3D smooth particle hydrodynamics framework that allows us to present likely ß factors for different target materials. We compare our results to other published work and discuss potential consequences for DART.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Astrophysics
- External organisation(s)
- Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
- Publication date
- 08-2018
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103004 Astrophysics, 103003 Astronomy
- Keywords
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/213e255e-9dba-4929-be64-2c3d3d308f2b