Characterization of Exogenic Boulders on Near-Earth Asteroid (101955) Bennu from OSIRIS-REx Color Images
Lucille Le Corre, Vishnu Reddy, William F. Bottke, Daniella N., DellaGiustina, Keara Burke, Jennifer Nolau, Robin B. Van Auken, Dathon R., Golish, Juan Sanchez, Jian-Yang Li, Christian d'Aubigny, Bashar Rizk, Dante, Lauretta

TL;DR
This study identifies and characterizes exogenic boulders on asteroid Bennu, revealing their likely composition and estimating the amount of material delivered from other bodies, which informs our understanding of asteroid surface processes.
Contribution
The paper provides the first global analysis of exogenic boulders on Bennu, including spectral characterization and estimates of external material contribution.
Findings
Exogenic boulders similar to eucrites are present on Bennu.
Mixtures of eucrites with carbonaceous material are also found.
Estimated external ordinary chondrite material in Bennu is around 91,000-150,000 m3.
Abstract
A small number of anomalously bright boulders on the near-Earth, rubble-pile asteroid (101955) Bennu were recently identified as eucritic material originating from asteroid (4) Vesta. Building on this discovery, we explored the global presence of exogenic boulders on Bennu. Our analysis focused on boulders larger than 1 m that show the characteristic 1-micron pyroxene absorption band in the four-color MapCam data from the OSIRIS-REx mission. We confirm the presence of exogenic boulders similar to eucrites and find that mixtures of eucrites with carbonaceous material is also a possible composition for some boulders. Some of the exogenic boulders have spectral properties similar to those of ordinary chondrite (OC) meteorites, although the laboratory spectra of these meteorites have a higher albedo than those measured on Bennu, which could be explained by either a grain size effect, the…
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