Bibcode
Campins, Humberto; Fernandez, Yan; Kelley, Michael; Licandro, Javier
Bibliographical reference
Spitzer Proposal ID #40322
Advertised on:
5
2007
Citations
1
Refereed citations
0
Description
The primary goal of this project is to characterize the surface
composition (and other properties such as radius, albedo and thermal
inertia) of a sample of low perihelion Near- Earth Asteroids (NEAs),
based on their 7 to 14 micron spectrum. NEAs with low perihelion
distances represent a unique laboratory in which to study the effects of
thermal processing on asteroid surfaces. We will study the mineral and
organic composition of our targets and we will search for correlations
between the mid-infrared spectral characteristics and other properties
such as size, albedo, rotational properties and orbital characteristics.
Understanding how asteroid surfaces change as a result of exposure to
high temperatures will help constrain models of the compositional and
thermal environment in the region of the protoplanetary disk where the
asteroids formed. Part of the motivation to study the low perihelion
NEAs comes from the results of our recent study of 3200 Phaethon
(Licandro et al. 2007), where we found indications that the surface
mineralogy of this low perihelion NEA may have been altered by the
perihelion thermal pulse. Our total time request is 10.1 hours.