Collaborative Research: Tidal disruption of near-Earth asteroids

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This collaborative project between Southwest Research Institute and the University of Maryland College Park studies how gravitational forces can reshape or tear apart near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). “Rubble-pile” asteroids (which are loose collections of material) and comets are known to reshape or come apart, through a process known as tidal distortion and disruption, as they pass close to planets. This research team will use computer simulations with inputs from observations to examine how tidal disruption changes the population of NEAs. They will address topics such as how many fragments are created, what their orbits are, and how many odd shapes can be attributed to the process. This will provide important insight into their history and potential futures and has relevance to planetary defense. The broader impacts leverage the interest of the general public in NEAs to continue a long-running public outreach program and to build an accessible toolset and lesson plan for wide use.Near-Earth asteroids are some of the closest and therefore best-studied objects in the Solar System, yet it is not known how pervasive the effects of tidal disruption could be among NEAs. This research team will model the interaction of rubble-pile asteroids having close flybys of terrestrial planets. They will determine whether their soft-sphere discrete code can produce some of the irregularly shaped NEAs, re-process their surfaces, and alter the size and orbital distribution of near-Earth asteroids. Through accurate modeling of the surface interactions between particles, this group will capture the effect of frictional forces and irregular shaped constituent pieces for a complete suite of tidal disruption models. Testing over the entire range of possible encounter scenarios (close approach and velocity) for the terrestrial planets, including a range of spin states (spin axis orientation and spin rates) and internal structure (large interior blocks), will be used to create a catalog of outcomes necessary to estimate how widely this process has altered the near-Earth population and be able to estimate the bodies most likely to have been affected.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.