Ejecta Exchange, Color Evolution in the Pluto System, and Implications for KBOs and Asteroids with Satellites

Abstract

We examine the ability of impacts by Kuiper Belt debris to cause regolith exchange between objects in the Pluto system. We find that ejecta velocities from KB impacts are too low to escape from Pluto and Charon. However, ejecta can escape Nix and Hydra, and is capable of covering one another to depths as high as 10s of meters, and Charon and Pluto, perhaps to depths up to several 10s of cm. Although Pluto's annual atmospheric frost deposition cycle will cover such imported debris on timescales faster than it is emplaced, no such masking mechanism is available on Hydra, Nix, and Charon. As a result, ejecta exchange between these bodies is expected to evolve their colors, albedos, and other photometric properties to be similar. We examined the ability of ejecta exchange to work for other Kuiper Belt binaries and found the process can be effective in many cases. This process may also operate in asteroid binary systems.

8 pages, 3 tables, 0 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Properties of the Trans-Neptunian Belt: Statistics From the CFHT Survey
• The Discovery of Two New Satellites of Pluto
• Collision rates in the present-day Kuiper Belt and Centaur Regions: Applications to surface activation and modification on Comets, Kuiper Belt Objects, Centaurs, and Pluto-Charon
• Masses of Nix and Hydra
• The Positions, Colors, and Photometric Variability of Pluto's Small Satellites from HST Observations 2005-2006
• Characteristics and Origin of the Quadruple System at Pluto

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Formation of Kuiper Belt Binaries by Gravitational Collapse
• Orbits and Masses of the Satellites of the Dwarf Planet Haumea = 2003 EL61
• The Correlated Colors of Transneptunian Binaries
• The Small Satellites of Pluto as Observed by New Horizons
• Circumbinary Chaos: Using Pluto's Newest Moon to Constrain the Masses of Nix & Hydra
• Hydrocode modeling of the spallation process during hypervelocity impacts: Implications for the ejection of Martian meteorites
• The Formation of Pluto's Low Mass Satellites
• Fomalhaut b as a Cloud of Dust: Testing Aspects of Planet Formation Theory
• Neptune Trojans and Plutinos: colors, sizes, dynamics, and their possible collisions
• The New Horizons and Hubble Space Telescope Search For Rings, Dust, and Debris in the Pluto-Charon System
• Ejecta Transfer in the Pluto System
• The Peculiar Photometric Properties of 2010 WG9: A Slowly-Rotating Trans-Neptunian Object from the Oort Cloud
• Probing the Hill Sphere of (486958) 2014 MU${}_{69}$: HST FGS Observations During the July 17, 2017 Stellar Occultation
• Dynamics of Haumea's dust ring
• On the Origin of the Pluto System
• The Rotational Light Curve of (79360) Sila-Nunam, an Eclipsing Binary in the Kuiper Belt
• Particles co-orbital to Janus and Epimetheus: a firefly planetary ring