Asteroid Models from Multiple Data Sources

TL;DR

This paper reviews advances in asteroid 3-D shape modeling using multiple data sources, highlighting how integrated remote sensing techniques improve understanding of asteroid physical properties and their implications for solar system science.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive multi-data modeling framework that combines various observational data to derive detailed asteroid physical and surface properties in a single inversion.

Findings

Remote sensing models confirmed by spacecraft encounters

Multi-data models refine asteroid population knowledge

Enhanced understanding of asteroid surface properties

Abstract

In the past decade, hundreds of asteroid shape models have been derived using the lightcurve inversion method. At the same time, a new framework of 3-D shape modeling based on the combined analysis of widely different data sources such as optical lightcurves, disk-resolved images, stellar occultation timings, mid-infrared thermal radiometry, optical interferometry, and radar delay-Doppler data, has been developed. This multi-data approach allows the determination of most of the physical and surface properties of asteroids in a single, coherent inversion, with spectacular results. We review the main results of asteroid lightcurve inversion and also recent advances in multi-data modeling. We show that models based on remote sensing data were confirmed by spacecraft encounters with asteroids, and we discuss how the multiplication of highly detailed 3-D models will help to refine our general knowledge of the asteroid population. The physical and surface properties of asteroids, i.e., their spin, 3-D shape, density, thermal inertia, surface roughness, are among the least known of all asteroid properties. Apart for the albedo and diameter, we have access to the whole picture for only a few hundreds of asteroids. These quantities are nevertheless very important to understand as they affect the non-gravitational Yarkovsky effect responsible for meteorite delivery to Earth, or the bulk composition and internal structure of asteroids.