Material properties and momentum transfer uncertainty for DART

Autor(en)

Thomas I. Maindl, Christoph M. Schäfer, Siegfried Eggl

Abstrakt

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(en)

Institut für Astrophysik

Externe Organisation(en)

Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

Publikationsdatum

08-2018

ÖFOS 2012

103004 Astrophysik, 103003 Astronomie

Schlagwörter

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/213e255e-9dba-4929-be64-2c3d3d308f2b