22 December 2021
Scientists present the first-ever analysis of samples retrieved from Ryugu
... and measurements taken by Hayabusa2 during its mission that the ancient space rock was a rubble pile asteroid. Rubble piles form when an asteroid or moon is smashed to pieces by an impact, and the shattered pieces subsequently fall back together...
16 March 2020
Porous nature of Ryugu suggests formation from fluffy particles, new study says
... to typical carbonaceous chondrites, add Okada and colleagues. All of this points to Ryugu being an ancient loosely packed rubble pile asteroid made of porous materials that formed under low gravity conditions. To get this way, it first started with...
October 2015
Taking AIM with ESA: proposing the first visit to a binary asteroid system
...beyond which centrifugal acceleration would cause material to escape from non-monolithic ‘rubble pile’ asteroids. Indeed, this might be the origin of many binary asteroid systems, which form 15% of the known total. And photon pressure on an irregular...
