THE ORIGIN OF ASTEROID 101955 (1999 RQ{sub 36})
- University of Central Florida, Physics Department, P.O. Box 162385, Orlando, FL 32816.2385 (United States)
- Departement Casiopee, Universite de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, CNRS 4, 06304 Nice (France)
- Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54 124 Thessaloniki (Greece)
- Instituto de Astrofisica de AndalucIa-CSIC, Camino Bajo de Huetor 50, 18008 Granada (Spain)
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), C/VIa Lactea s/n, 38205 La Laguna (Spain)
- Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
Near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 101955 (1999 RQ{sub 36}; henceforth RQ36) is especially accessible to spacecraft and is the primary target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample return mission; it is also a potentially hazardous asteroid. We combine dynamical and spectral information to identify the most likely main-belt origin of RQ36 and we conclude that it is the Polana family, located at a semimajor axis of about 2.42 AU. We also conclude that the Polana family may be the most important inner-belt source of low-albedo NEAs. These conclusions are based on the following results. (1) Dynamical evidence strongly favors an inner-belt, low-inclination (2.15 AU < a < 2.5 AU and i < 10{sup 0}) origin, suggesting the {nu}{sub 6} resonance as the preferred (95% probability) delivery route. (2) This region is dominated by the Nysa and Polana families. (3) The Polana family is characterized by low albedos and B-class spectra or colors, the same albedo and spectral class as RQ36. (4) The Sloan Digital Sky Survey colors show that the Polana family is the branch of the Nysa-Polana complex that extends toward the {nu}{sub 6} resonance; furthermore, the Polana family has delivered objects of the size of RQ36 and larger into the {nu}{sub 6} resonance. (5) A quantitative comparison of visible and near-infrared spectra does not yield a unique match for RQ36; however, it is consistent with a compositional link between RQ36 and the Polana family.
- OSTI ID:
- 21452801
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 721, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/721/1/L53; ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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