Giant Impact onto a Vesta-Like Asteroid and Formation of Mesosiderites through Mixing of Metallic Core and Surface Crust

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to explore how giant impacts on differentiated asteroids can produce mesosiderites, emphasizing the importance of internal structure in the resulting material mixing.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that a thick crust and large core structure in asteroids favor mesosiderite formation through giant impacts, challenging the conventional thin-crust magma ocean model.

Findings

Thick crust and large core models produce mesosiderite-like materials with minimal mantle contamination.

Thin crust models tend to expose mantle material, making mesosiderite formation less likely.

Impact simulations suggest internal structure critically influences surface composition after giant impacts.

Abstract

Mesosiderites are a type of stony-iron meteorites composed of a mixture of silicates and Fe-Ni metals. The mesosiderite silicates and metals are considered to have originated from the crust and metal core, respectively, of a differentiated asteroid. In contrast, mesosiderites rarely contain the olivine that is mainly included in a mantle. Although a giant impact onto a differentiated asteroid is considered to be a probable mechanism to mix crust and metal materials to form mesosiderites, it is not obvious how such a giant impact can form mesosiderite-like materials without including mantle materials. We conducted numerical simulations of giant impacts onto differentiated asteroids, using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method, to investigate the detailed distribution of mixed materials on the resultant bodies. For the internal structure of a target body, we used a thin-crust model derived from the magma ocean crystallization model of the asteroid Vesta and a thick-crust and a large-core model suggested from the proximity observation of Vesta by the Dawn probe. In the simulations with the former model, excavation of the metal core requires nearly catastrophic impacts and mantle is exposed over large surface areas. Thus, stony-iron materials produced on its surface are likely to include mantle materials and it is difficult to produce mesosiderite-like materials. Conversely, in the simulations with the latter model, mantle materials are exposed only at impact sites, even when the impacts excavate the metal core, and the formation of a surface with little mantle material and the formation of mesosiderite-like materials are possible. Therefore, our simulations suggest that an internal structure with a thick crust and a large core is more likely as a mesosiderite parent body rather than the thin-crust internal structure inferred from the conventional magma ocean model.