An N-body approach to modeling debris and ejecta off small bodies: Implementation and application

TL;DR

This paper introduces RED, a new N-body simulation package built as an extension to Rebound, designed to model debris and ejecta from small bodies like asteroids with high accuracy and efficiency, incorporating multiple physical effects.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Python-based N-body modeling tool, RED, that extends Rebound to simulate debris evolution around small bodies with multiple physical mechanisms included.

Findings

Successfully modeled ejecta dynamics for a binary asteroid system

Demonstrated the capability to include various physical effects in simulations

Provided a flexible, modular tool for future small body debris studies

Abstract

We introduce here our new approach to modeling particle cloud evolution off surface of small bodies (asteroids and comets), following the evolution of ejected particles requires dealing with various time and spatial scales, in an efficient, accurate and modular way. In order to improve computational efficiency and accuracy of such calculations, we created an N-body modeling package as an extension to the increasingly popular orbital dynamics N-body integrator Rebound. Our code is currently a stand-alone variant of the Rebound code and is aimed at advancing a comprehensive understanding of individual particle trajectories, external forcing, and interactions, at the scale which is otherwise overlooked by other modeling approaches. The package we developed -- Rebound Ejecta Dynamics (RED) -- is a Python-based implementation with no additional dependencies. It incorporates several major mechanisms that affect the evolution of particles in low-gravity environments and enables a more straightforward simulation of combined effects. We include variable size and velocity distributions, solar radiation pressure, ellipsoidal gravitational potential, binary or triple asteroid systems, and particle-particle interactions. In this paper, we present a sample of the RED package capabilities. These are applied to a small asteroid binary system (characterized following the Didymos/Dimorphos system, which is the target for NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission)