Itokawa Asteroid

Anny Chantal Levasseur-Regourd (1)

1 PLANETO - LATMOS

Itokawa (25143) is a near-Earth stony (S-type) asteroid. This object has been the first asteroidal target for a sample return mission, the JAXA Hayabusa mission. Itokawa is likely a contact binary. It is small (major axes 530 m, 290 m, and 210 m) and has a rotation period of about 12.13 h. Its density is rather low (≈ 1950 kg m-3), meaning that it is porous. This asteroid could indeed have been built from loose-packed rocks held together by gravity, after an impact on a larger parent body. It presents a significant topographic diversity, with boulders on rough terrains and a featureless central area of fine dust particles forming a smooth regolith in gravitational lows. Such results are of importance when considering orbital deflection techniques to be implemented if a similar asteroid was discovered on a collision course with the Earth. Samples analyses have identified more than 1000 dust particles retrieved from Itokawa, with sizes mostly below 100...

Domaines: Planétologie et astrophysique de la terre [astro-ph.EP]

Anny Chantal Levasseur-Regourd. Itokawa Asteroid. Muriel Gargaud, William M. Irvine, Ricardo Amils, Philippe Claeys, Henderson James Cleaves, Maryvonne Gerin, Daniel Rouan, Tilman Spohn, Stéphane Tirard, Michel Viso (eds). Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp.1568, 2023, Print ISBN: 978-3-662-65092-9 / Online ISBN: 978-3-662-65093-6. ⟨10.1007/978-3-662-65093-6_4029⟩. ⟨insu-03475931⟩