A Spectrophotometric Investigation of the Evolutionary History of the Inner Asteroid Belt

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The goals of this research by Dr. Gaffey are to improve our understanding of inner Solar System planetesimals by investigating: (a) the evolutionary history of the inner belt asteroids; (b) the nature of the early post-accretionary heating event which effected these bodies as well as the meteorite parent bodies; (c) the collisional evolution of the inner belt; (d) the nature of magmatic differentiation in small planetary objects; and (e) the nature of the planetesimal population in the early inner Solar System which accreted to form the large terrestrial planets. The asteroids and the meteorites are the sole inner Solar System remnants of the period during and just after the formation of the Solar System. Asteroids provide a "map" of the conditions and processes in the early inner Solar System while the meteorites provide a "calendar" of the events occurring during this period. Earth-based telescopic observations can be used to determine the surface mineralogies of these minor planets. The mineralogical composition records the conditions of formation of that asteroid including its thermal evolution, metamorphism or magmatic differentiation, and collisional history. Dr. Gaffey will derive histories of individual asteroids to investigate the compositional variations of the original solar nebula, the pattern of thermal and collisional processes within the asteroid belt, the early evolution of the Sun, and the nature of the early Earth which accreted from a similar population of planetesimals.