Publication Date:
2006-06-03
Description:
The ranging instrument aboard the Hayabusa spacecraft measured the surface topography of asteroid 25143 Itokawa and its mass. A typical rough area is similar in roughness to debris located on the interior wall of a large crater on asteroid 433 Eros, which suggests a surface structure on Itokawa similar to crater ejecta on Eros. The mass of Itokawa was estimated as (3.58 +/- 0.18) x 10(10) kilograms, implying a bulk density of (1.95 +/- 0.14) grams per cubic centimeter for a volume of (1.84 +/- 0.09) x 10(7) cubic meters and a bulk porosity of approximately 40%, which is similar to that of angular sands, when assuming an LL (low iron chondritic) meteorite composition. Combined with surface observations, these data indicate that Itokawa is the first subkilometer-sized small asteroid showing a rubble-pile body rather than a solid monolithic asteroid.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Abe, Shinsuke -- Mukai, Tadashi -- Hirata, Naru -- Barnouin-Jha, Olivier S -- Cheng, Andrew F -- Demura, Hirohide -- Gaskell, Robert W -- Hashimoto, Tatsuaki -- Hiraoka, Kensuke -- Honda, Takayuki -- Kubota, Takashi -- Matsuoka, Masatoshi -- Mizuno, Takahide -- Nakamura, Ryosuke -- Scheeres, Daniel J -- Yoshikawa, Makoto -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Jun 2;312(5778):1344-7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kobe University, Nada, Kobe 657-8501, Japan. avell@kobe-u.ac.jp〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16741111" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
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Computer Science
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Medicine
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Natural Sciences in General
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Physics
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