Vesta and Ceres: crossing the history of the Solar System

Abstract

The evolution of the Solar System can be schematically divided into three different phases: the Solar Nebula, the Primordial Solar System and the Modern Solar System. These three periods were characterized by very different conditions, both from the point of view of the physical conditions and from that of the processes there were acting through them. Across the Solar Nebula phase, planetesimals and planetary embryos were forming and differentiating due to the decay of short-lived radionuclides. At the same time, giant planets formed their cores and accreted the nebular gas to reach their present masses. After the gas dispersal, the Primordial Solar System began its evolution. In the inner Solar System, planetary embryos formed the terrestrial planets and, in combination with the gravitational perturbations of the giant planets, depleted the residual population of planetesimals. In the outer Solar System, giant planets underwent a violent, chaotic phase of orbital rearrangement which caused the Late Heavy Bombardment. Then the rapid and fierce evolution of the young Solar System left place to the more regular secular evolution of the Modern Solar System. Vesta, through its connection with HED meteorites, and plausibly Ceres too were between the first bodies to form in the history of the Solar System. Here we discuss the timescale of their formation and evolution and how they would have been affected by their passage through the different phases of the history of the Solar System, in order to draw a reference framework to interpret the data that Dawn mission will supply on them.

27 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables; the final publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• The contamination of the surface of Vesta by impacts and the delivery of the dark material
• The role of planetary formation and evolution in shaping the composition of exoplanetary atmospheres
• The heating history of Vesta and the onset of differentiation
• Lithologic Mapping of HED Terrains on Vesta using Dawn Framing Camera Color Data
• The Formation of Jupiter, the Jovian Early Bombardment and the Delivery of Water to the Asteroid Belt: The Case of (4) Vesta
• Spacecraft Swarm Dynamics and Control About Asteroids
• Olivine on Vesta as exogenous contaminants brought by impacts: Constraints from modeling Vesta's collisional history and from impact simulations
• The GAPS program at TNG XLVII: The unusual formation history of V1298 Tau
• The primordial collisional history of Vesta: crater saturation, surface evolution and survival of the basaltic crust
• The surface of (1) Ceres in visible light as seen by Dawn/VIR
• The Influence of Space Environment on the Evolution of Mercury
• The late accretion and erosion of Vesta's crust recorded by eucrites and diogenites as an astrochemical window into the formation of Jupiter and the early evolution of the Solar System
• Chondrule formation by collisions of planetesimals containing volatiles triggered by Jupiter's formation
• The surface of (4) Vesta in visible light as seen by Dawn/VIR