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Thermophysical Characteristics of OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroid (101955) Bennu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2016

Liangliang Yu  and
Jianghui Ji
Liangliang Yu
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Planetary Sciences, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China Lunar and Planetary Science Laboratory, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau email: jijh@pmo.ac.cn, yullmoon@pmo.ac.cn
Jianghui Ji
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Planetary Sciences, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
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Abstract

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In this work, we investigate the thermophysical properties, including thermal inertia, roughness fraction and surface grain size of OSIRIS-REx target asteroid (101955) Bennu by using a thermophysical model with the recently updated 3D radar-derived shape model (Nolan et al., 2013) and mid-infrared observations (Müller et al. 2012, Emery et al., 2014). We find that the asteroid bears an effective diameter of 510+6−40 m, a geometric albedo of 0.047+0.0083−0.0011, a roughness fraction of 0.04+0.26−0.04, and thermal inertia of 240+440−60 Jm−2s−0.5K−1 for our best-fit solution. The best-estimate thermal inertia suggests that fine-grained regolith may cover a large portion of Bennu's surface, where a grain size may vary from 1.3 to 31 mm. Our outcome suggests that Bennu is suitable for the OSIRIS-REx mission to return samples to Earth.

Keywords

radiation mechanisms: thermalminor planetsasteroids: individual: (101955) Bennuinfrared: general
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 10 , Issue S318: Asteroids: New Observations, New Models , August 2015 , pp. 218 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2016 

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