Publications (26)
Evidence of Possible Spectral Variability in the Patroclus-Menoetius Binary System
Ian Wong, William M. Grundy, Joshua P. Emery +5
We present new visible-wavelength spectroscopic observations of the Patroclus-Menoetius binary system in the Jupiter Trojan population. Motivated by previously published spectra fr…
Prospects of a New Trojan Flyby Target for the Lucy Mission
Luis E. Salazar Manzano, David W. Gerdes, Kevin J. Napier +6
NASA's Lucy spacecraft is en route to conduct the first close encounter with Jupiter's Trojans. While most scheduled flybys lie in the cloud, the only target is the Pat…
A pre-flyby view on the origin of asteroid Donaldjohanson, a target of the NASA Lucy mission
Simone Marchi, David Vokrouhlický, David Nesvorný +3
The NASA Lucy mission is scheduled to fly-by the main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025. Donaldjohanson (DJ hereafter) is a member of the primitive (C-type cla…
The Renaissance of Main Belt Asteroid Science
Simone Marchi, Carol A. Raymond, Christopher T. Russell
The NASA Dawn spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral in September 2007 atop a Delta II rocket starting an ambitious journey to Vesta and Ceres, the two most massive worlds in the…
Successful Kinetic Impact into an Asteroid for Planetary Defense
R. Terik Daly, Carolyn M. Ernst, Olivier S. Barnouin +98
While no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next century, the catalog of near-Earth asteroids is incomplete for objects whose impacts would produce regional de…
Constraining Prebiotic Chemistry Through a Better Understanding of Earth's Earliest Environments
Timothy W. Lyons, Karyn Rogers, Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy +5
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an und…
Ceres and the Terrestrial Planets Impact Cratering Record
Robert G. Strom, Simone Marchi, Renu Malhotra
Dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the Main Asteroid Belt, has a surface that exhibits a range of crater densities for a crater diameter range of 5-300 km. In all areas the…
The activity of Main Belt comets
Maria Teresa Capria, Simone Marchi, Maria Cristina De Sanctis +2
Main Belt comets represent a recently discovered class of objects. They are quite intriguing because, while having a Tisserand invariant value higher than 3, are showing cometary a…
A collision in 2009 as the origin of the debris trail of asteroid P/2010 A2
Colin Snodgrass, Cecilia Tubiana, Jean-Baptiste Vincent +15
The peculiar object P/2010 A2 was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth asteroid survey in January 2010 and given a cometary designation due to the presence of a trail of material, a…
The Collisional Evolution of the Primordial Kuiper Belt, Its Destabilized Population, and the Trojan Asteroids
William Bottke, David Vokrouhlicky, Raphael Marshall +6
The tumultuous early era of outer solar system evolution culminated when Neptune migrated across the primordial Kuiper belt (PKB) and triggered a dynamical instability among the gi…
Formation of Lunar Basins from Impacts of Leftover Planetesimals
David Nesvorny, Fernando V. Roig, David Vokrouhlicky +4
The Moon holds important clues to the early evolution of the Solar System. Some 50 impact basins (crater diameter D>300 km) have been recognized on the lunar surface, implying that…
The formation and structure of iron-dominated planetesimals
Terry-Ann Suer, Edgar S. Steenstra, Simone Marchi +2
Metal-rich asteroids and iron meteorites are considered core remnants of differentiated planetesimals and or products of oxygen-depleted accretion. Investigating the origins of iro…
Size-Frequency Distribution of Terrestrial Leftover Planetesimals and S-complex Implanted Asteroids
Rogerio Deienno, Andre Izidoro, David Nesvorny +3
The isotopic composition of meteorites linked to S-complex asteroids has been used to suggest that these asteroids originated in the terrestrial planet's region, i.e., within 1.5 a…
A Contact Binary Satellite of the Asteroid (152830) Dinkinesh
Harold F. Levison, Simone Marchi, Keith S. Noll +3
Asteroids with diameters less than about 5 km have complex histories because they are small enough for radiative torques, YORP, to be a notable factor in their evolution. (152830)…
Spectroscopic study of Ceres' collisional family candidates
Fernando Tinaut-Ruano, Julia de Leon, Eri Tatsumi +3
Context: Despite the observed signs of large impacts on the surface of Ceres, there is no confirmed collisional family associated with this dwarf planet. After a dynamical and phot…
Extrasolar planet taxonomy: a new statistical approach
Simone Marchi
In this paper we present the guidelines for an extrasolar planet taxonomy. The discovery of an increasing number of extrasolar planets showing a vast variety of planetary parameter…
Boulders on asteroid Toutatis as observed by Chang'e-2
Yun Jiang, Jianghui Ji, Jiangchuan Huang +3
Boulders are ubiquitously found on the surfaces of small rocky bodies in the inner solar system and their spatial and size distributions give insight into the geological evolution…
A Sawtooth-like Timeline for the First Billion Year of Lunar Bombardment
Alessandro Morbidelli, Simone Marchi, William F. Bottke +1
We revisit the early evolution of the Moon's bombardment. Our work combines modeling (based on plausible projectile sources and their dynamical decay rates) with constraints from t…
Lucy Mission to the Trojan Asteroids: Instrumentation and Encounter Concept of Operations
Catherine B. Olkin, Harold F. Levison, Michael Vincent +19
The Lucy Mission accomplishes its science during a series of five flyby encounters with seven Trojan asteroid targets. This mission architecture drives a concept of operations desi…
On the origin of the Almahata-Sitta meteorite and 2008TC3 asteroid
Julie Gayon-Markt, Marco Delbo, Alessandro Morbidelli +1
Asteroid 2008TC3 was a Near Earth Asteroid that impacted the Earth on 2008 October 7. Meteorites were produced by the break-up of 2008TC3 in the high atmosphere and at present, abo…
Convex Shape and Rotation Model of Lucy Target (11351) Leucus from Lightcurves and Occultations
Stefano Mottola, Stephan Hellmich, Marc W. Buie +4
We report new photometric lightcurve observations of the Lucy Mission target (11351) Leucus acquired during the 2017, 2018 and 2019 apparitions. We use these data in combination wi…
Early Bombardment of the Moon: Connecting the Lunar Crater Record to the Terrestrial Planet Formation
David Nesvorny, Fernando V. Roig, David Vokrouhlicky +4
The lunar crater record features basins. The radiometric dating of Apollo samples indicates that the Imbrium basin formed relatively late -- from the planet formation per…
Constraining the Cratering Chronology of Vesta
David P. O'Brien, Simone Marchi, Alessandro Morbidelli +4
Vesta has a complex cratering history, with ancient terrains as well as recent large impacts that have led to regional resurfacing. Crater counts can help constrain the relative ag…
JWST near-infrared spectroscopy of the Lucy Jupiter Trojan flyby targets: Evidence for OH absorption, aliphatic organics, and CO
Ian Wong, Michael E. Brown, Joshua P. Emery +6
We present observations obtained with the Near Infrared Spectrograph on JWST of the five Jupiter Trojans that will be visited by the Lucy spacecraft -- the Patroclus-Menoetius bina…
A new martian crater chronology: Implications for Jezero crater
Simone Marchi
Crater chronologies are a fundamental tool to assess relative and absolute ages of planetary surfaces when direct radiometric dating is not available. Martian crater chronologies a…
Dark Primitive Asteroids Account for a Large Share of K/Pg-Scale Impacts on the Earth
David Nesvorny, William F. Bottke, Simone Marchi
A dynamical model for large near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is developed here to understand the occurrence rate and nature of Cretaceous-Paleogene (K/Pg) scale impacts on the Earth. We…