Tidal End States of Binary Asteroid Systems with a Nonspherical Component

Abstract

We derive the locations of the fully synchronous end states of tidal evolution for binary asteroid systems having one spherical component and one oblate- or prolate-spheroid component. Departures from a spherical shape, at levels observed among binary asteroids, can result in the lack of a stable tidal end state for particular combinations of the system mass fraction and angular momentum, in which case the binary must collapse to contact. We illustrate our analytical results with near-Earth asteroids (8567) 1996 HW1, (66391) 1999 KW4, and 69230 Hermes.

13 pages, 3 figures, published in Icarus

References in corpus (3)

• Dynamics of rotationally fissioned asteroids: Source of observed small asteroid systems
• Formation of asteroid pairs by rotational fission
• Angular Momemtum of Binary Asteroids: Implication for their possible origin

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