Multiple and Fast: The Accretion of Ordinary Chondrite Parent Bodies

TL;DR

This study uses spectral and mineralogical data from asteroids and meteorites to propose new constraints on the formation, interior structure, and accretion timescales of ordinary chondrite parent bodies in the early solar system.

Contribution

It introduces novel spectral analysis methods to distinguish formation locations of chondrites and suggests implications for asteroid surface exposure and accretion durations.

Findings

Large groups of similar asteroids likely originate from multiple parent bodies.

Asteroid surfaces mainly expose interiors due to early impacts.

Accretion of H chondrite parent bodies was very rapid (<10^5 years).

Abstract

Although petrologic, chemical and isotopic studies of ordinary chondrites and meteorites in general have largely helped establish a chronology of the earliest events of planetesimal formation and their evolution, there are several questions that cannot be resolved via laboratory measurements and/or experiments only. Here we propose rationale for several new constraints on the formation and evolution of ordinary chondrite parent bodies (and by extension most planetesimals) from newly available spectral measurements and mineralogical analysis of main belt S-type asteroids (83 objects) and unequilibrated ordinary chondrite meteorites (53 samples). Based on the latter, we suggest spectral data may be used to distinguish whether an ordinary chondrite was formed near the surface or in the interior of its parent body. If these constraints are correct, the suggested implications include that: i) large groups of compositionally similar asteroids are a natural outcome of planetesimal formation and, consequently, meteorites within a given class can originate from multiple parent bodies; ii) the surfaces of large (up to ~200km) S-type main-belt asteroids expose mostly the interiors of the primordial bodies, a likely consequence of impacts by small asteroids (D<10km) in the early solar system (Ciesla et al. 2013); iii) the duration of accretion of the H chondrite parent bodies was likely short (instantaneous or in less then ~10^5 yr but certainly not as long as 1 Myr); iv) LL-like bodies formed closer to the Sun than H-like bodies, a possible consequence of radial mixing and size sorting of chondrules in the protoplanetary disk prior to accretion.