Impacts on Ceres and Vesta: Source regions, cratering, and fragmentation

TL;DR

This study models impactor sources, cratering, and fragmentation on Ceres and Vesta, revealing dominant impact regions, reproducing large craters, and estimating long-term fragment ejection rates.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed collisional evolution model of the asteroid belt that quantifies impactor sources, crater formation, and fragmentation on Ceres and Vesta.

Findings

Outer belt is the main source of small impactors on Ceres.

Reproduction of large craters like Vendimia Planitia on Ceres and impact features on Vesta.

Hundreds of large fragments ejected from Ceres and Vesta over their history.

Abstract

We perform a study on the impacts on Ceres and Vesta. We aim to determine the size-frequency distribution (SFD) of impactors and to identify and quantify the contribution of each source region, as well as the craters produced and fragments ejected in these impact events. We used a multipart collisional evolution model of the MB called ACDC (Asteroid Collisions and Dynamic Computation) that simulates the collisional evolution of the MB, which is split into six regions (namely Inner, Middle, Pristine, Outer, Cybele, and High-Inclination belts). Furthermore, it includes the Yarkovsky effect as a dynamical remotion mechanism. The six regions of the MB provide, to a greater or lesser extent, impactors on Ceres and Vesta. The Outer belt is the main source of impactors smaller than 10 km on Ceres, providing more than half of the impacts, while the Middle belt is the secondary source. On Vesta, the relative impactor contribution of the Inner, Middle, and Outer belts is almost even. We are able to reproduce the craters larger than 100 km in Vesta and identify two large depressions identified in Ceres as impact craters: one called Vendimia Planitia of 900 km and a second one of 570 km. As an outcome of these impacts, Ceres and Vesta eject fragments into the MB. We obtain fragmentation rates of tens of fragments larger than 1 m per year for both bodies, to tens of fragments larger than 100 m per million years for Vesta and a factor of 4 greater for Ceres. We find that hundreds of bodies larger than 10 km should have been ejected from Ceres and Vesta during their history