Orbital and thermal evolutions of four potential targets for a sample return space mission to a primitive near-Earth asteroid     

Patrick Michel  Marco Delbo 《Icarus》2010,209(2):520-534

In this paper, we present our study of the orbital and thermal evolutions, due to solar radiative heating, of four near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) considered as potential target candidates for sample return space missions to primitive asteroids. We used a dynamical model of the NEA population to estimate the most likely source region and orbital history of these objects. Then, for each asteroid, we integrated numerically over their entire lifetime a set of 14 initially indistinguishable orbit (clones), obtained by small variations of the nominal initial conditions. Using a thermal model, we then computed surface and sub-surface temperatures of these bodies during their dynamical history. Our aim is to determine whether these bodies are likely to have experienced high temperature level, and whether great temperature changes can be expected due to the orbital changes as well as their maximum and minimum values. Such information is important in the framework of sample return space missions whose goal is to bring back pristine materials. The knowledge of the temperature range of materials at different depth over the orbital evolution of potential targets can help defining sampling strategies that ensure the likelihood that unaltered material will be brought back. Our results suggest that for all the considered potential targets, the surface has experienced for some time temperatures greater than 400 K and at most 500 K with 50% probability. This probability drops rapidly with increasing temperature. Sub-surface materials at a depth of only 3 cm are much more protected from high temperature and generally do not reach temperatures exceeding 450 K (with 50% probability). They should thus be unaltered at this depth at least from a Sun-driven heating point of view. On the other hand, surface material for some of the considered objects can have a range of temperature which can make them less reliable as pristine materials. However, it is assumed here that the same material is constantly exposed to solar heat, while regolith turnover may occur. The latter can be caused by different processes such as seismic shaking and/or impact cratering. This would reduce the total time that materials are exposed to a certain temperature. Thus, it is very likely that a sample collected from any of the four considered targets, or any primitive NEA with similar dynamical properties, will have components that will be thermally unaltered as long as some of it comes from only 3 to 5 cm depth. Such a depth is not considered difficult to reach with some of the current designs of sampling devices.  相似文献   

Three-body capture of irregular satellites: Application to Jupiter     

Catherine M. Philpott  Douglas P. Hamilton 《Icarus》2010,208(2):824-836

We investigate a new theory of the origin of the irregular satellites of the giant planets: capture of one member of a ∼100-km binary asteroid after tidal disruption. The energy loss from disruption is sufficient for capture, but it cannot deliver the bodies directly to the observed orbits of the irregular satellites. Instead, the long-lived capture orbits subsequently evolve inward due to interactions with a tenuous circumplanetary gas disk.We focus on the capture by Jupiter, which, due to its large mass, provides a stringent test of our model. We investigate the possible fates of disrupted bodies, the differences between prograde and retrograde captures, and the effects of Callisto on captured objects. We make an impulse approximation and discuss how it allows us to generalize capture results from equal-mass binaries to binaries with arbitrary mass ratios.We find that at Jupiter, binaries offer an increase of a factor of ∼10 in the capture rate of 100-km objects as compared to single bodies, for objects separated by tens of radii that approach the planet on relatively low-energy trajectories. These bodies are at risk of collision with Callisto, but may be preserved by gas drag if their pericenters are raised quickly enough. We conclude that our mechanism is as capable of producing large irregular satellites as previous suggestions, and it avoids several problems faced by alternative models.  相似文献   

Exchange of ejecta between Telesto and Calypso: Tadpoles, horseshoes, and passing orbits     

Anthony R. Dobrovolskis  José Luis Alvarellos  Jack J. Lissauer 《Icarus》2010,210(1):436-445

We have numerically integrated the orbits of ejecta from Telesto and Calypso, the two small Trojan companions of Saturn’s major satellite Tethys. Ejecta were launched with speeds comparable to or exceeding their parent’s escape velocity, consistent with impacts into regolith surfaces. We find that the fates of ejecta fall into several distinct categories, depending on both the speed and direction of launch.The slowest ejecta follow suborbital trajectories and re-impact their source moon in less than one day. Slightly faster debris barely escape their parent’s Hill sphere and are confined to tadpole orbits, librating about Tethys’ triangular Lagrange points L₄ (leading, near Telesto) or L₅ (trailing, near Calypso) with nearly the same orbital semi-major axis as Tethys, Telesto, and Calypso. These ejecta too eventually re-impact their source moon, but with a median lifetime of a few dozen years. Those which re-impact within the first 10 years or so have lifetimes near integer multiples of 348.6 days (half the tadpole period).Still faster debris with azimuthal velocity components ?10 m/s enter horseshoe orbits which enclose both L₄ and L₅ as well as L₃, but which avoid Tethys and its Hill sphere. These ejecta impact either Telesto or Calypso at comparable rates, with median lifetimes of several thousand years. However, they cannot reach Tethys itself; only the fastest ejecta, with azimuthal velocities ?40 m/s, achieve “passing orbits” which are able to encounter Tethys. Tethys accretes most of these ejecta within several years, but some 1% of them are scattered either inward to hit Enceladus or outward to strike Dione, over timescales on the order of a few hundred years.  相似文献   

THEMIS-VIS observations of clouds in the martian mesosphere: Altitudes, wind speeds, and decameter-scale morphology     

T.H. McConnochie  J.F. Bell III  D. Savransky  M.J. Wolff  A.D. Toigo  H. Wang  M.I. Richardson  P.R. Christensen 《Icarus》2010,210(2):545-565

We present measurements of the altitude and eastward velocity component of mesospheric clouds in 35 imaging sequences acquired by the Mars Odyssey (ODY) spacecraft’s Thermal Emission Imaging System visible imaging subsystem (THEMIS-VIS). We measure altitude by using the parallax drift of high-altitude features, and the velocity by exploiting the time delay in the THEMIS-VIS imaging sequence.We observe two distinct classes of mesospheric clouds: equatorial mesospheric clouds observed between 0° and 180° L_s; and northern mid-latitude clouds observed only in twilight in the 200–300° L_s period. The equatorial mesospheric clouds are quite rare in the THEMIS-VIS data set. We have detected them in only five imaging sequences, out of a total of 2048 multi-band equatorial imaging sequences. All five fall between 20° south and 0° latitude, and between 260° and 295° east longitude. The mid-latitude mesospheric clouds are apparently much more common; for these we find 30 examples out of 210 northern winter mid-latitude twilight imaging sequences. The observed mid-latitude clouds are found, with only one exception, in the Acidalia region, but this is quite likely an artifact of the pattern of THEMIS-VIS image targeting. Comparing our THEMIS-VIS images with daily global maps generated from Mars Orbiter Camera Wide Angle (MOC-WA) images, we find some evidence that some mid-latitude mesospheric cloud features correspond to cloud features commonly observed by MOC-WA. Comparing the velocity of our mesospheric clouds with a GCM, we find good agreement for the northern mid-latitude class, but also find that the GCM fails to match the strong easterly winds measured for the equatorial clouds.Applying a simple radiative transfer model to some of the equatorial mesospheric clouds, we find good model fits in two different imaging sequences. By using the observed radiance contrast between cloud and cloud-free regions at multiple visible-band wavelengths, these fits simultaneously constrain the optical depths and particles sizes of the clouds. The particle sizes are constrained primarily by the relative contrasts at the available wavelengths, and are found to be quite different in the two imaging sequences: r_eff = 0.1 μm and r_eff = 1.5 μm. The optical depths (constrained by the absolute contrasts) are substantial: 0.22 and 0.5, respectively. These optical depths imply a mass density that greatly exceeds the saturated mass density of water vapor at mesospheric temperatures, and so the aerosol particles are probably composed mainly of CO₂ ice. Our simple radiative transfer model is not applicable to twilight, when the mid-latitude mesospheric clouds were observed, and so we leave the properties of these clouds as a question for further work.  相似文献   

Analysis of Jupiter’s Oval BA: A streamlined approach     

Michael G. Sussman  Nancy J. Chanover  Ashwin R. Vasavada 《Icarus》2010,210(1):202-210

We present a novel method of constructing streamlines to derive wind speeds within jovian vortices and demonstrate its application to Oval BA for 2001 pre-reddened Cassini flyby data, 2007 post-reddened New Horizons flyby data, and 1998 Galileo data of precursor Oval DE. Our method, while automated, attempts to combine the advantages of both automated and manual cloud tracking methods. The southern maximum wind speed of Oval BA does not show significant changes between these data sets to within our measurement uncertainty. The northern maximum does appear to have increased in strength during this time interval, which likely correlates with the oval’s return to a symmetric shape. We demonstrate how the use of closed streamlines can provide measurements of vorticity averaged over the encircled area with no a priori assumptions concerning oval shape. We find increased averaged interior vorticity between pre- and post-reddened Oval BA, with the precursor Oval DE occupying a middle value of vorticity between these two.  相似文献   

Multi-wavelength simulations of atmospheric radiation from Io with a 3-D spherical-shell backward Monte Carlo radiative transfer model     

Sergey L. Gratiy  Andrew C. Walker  David B. Goldstein  Laurence M. Trafton 《Icarus》2010,207(1):394-408

Conflicting observations regarding the dominance of either sublimation or volcanism as the source of the atmosphere on Io and disparate reports on the extent of its spatial distribution and the absolute column abundance invite the development of detailed computational models capable of improving our understanding of Io’s unique atmospheric structure and origin. Improving upon previous models, Walker et al. (Walker, A.C., Gratiy, S.L., Levin, D.A., Goldstein, D.B., Varghese, P.L., Trafton, L.M., Moore, C.H., Stewart, B. [2009]. Icarus) developed a fully 3-D global rarefied gas dynamics model of Io’s atmosphere including both sublimation and volcanic sources of SO₂ gas. The fidelity of the model is tested by simulating remote observations at selected wavelength bands and comparing them to the corresponding astronomical observations of Io’s atmosphere. The simulations are performed with a new 3-D spherical-shell radiative transfer code utilizing a backward Monte Carlo method. We present: (1) simulations of the mid-infrared disk-integrated spectra of Io’s sunlit hemisphere at 19 μm, obtained with TEXES during 2001-2004; (2) simulations of disk-resolved images at Lyman-α obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) during 1997-2001; and (3) disk-integrated simulations of emission line profiles in the millimeter wavelength range obtained with the IRAM-30 m telescope in October-November 1999. We found that the atmospheric model generally reproduces the longitudinal variation in band depth from the mid-infrared data; however, the best match is obtained when our simulation results are shifted ∼30° toward lower orbital longitudes. The simulations of Lyman-α images do not reproduce the mid-to-high latitude bright patches seen in the observations, suggesting that the model atmosphere sustains columns that are too high at those latitudes. The simulations of emission line profiles in the millimeter spectral region support the hypothesis that the atmospheric dynamics favorably explains the observed line widths, which are too wide to be formed by thermal Doppler broadening alone.  相似文献   

Socio-economic drivers of deforestation in Roghani Valley,Hindu-Raj Mountains,Northern Pakistan   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

Fazlur RAHMAN  Fazlul HAQ  Iffat TABASSUM  Ihsan ULLAH 《山地科学学报》2014,11(1):167-179

Deforestation and associated ecological disturbances are the issues of global concern.Researchers have investigated a number of driving forces which accelerate the rate of deforestation at local and regional levels.These include poverty,population growth,market demand and prices,political instability,agricultural expansion and changes in property right and ownership regimes.This paper seeks to explore the impacts of population growth,changing tenure system and other socioeconomic factors on the forest cover of Roghani Valley,located in Hindu Raj Mountains,Northern Pakistan.The present study is mainly based on information collected through participatory observation,selfadministered interviews and questionnaire survey.Geographical Information System（GIS） database is also used for mapping and quantification.The results reveal that in the past three to four decades the study area has been subjected to severe deforestation and about half of the forest area has been converted into barren land.Thus,the area under natural forests decreased from 2099 to 1444 hectares in four decades.This large-scale deforestation is attributed to both proximate and under lying causes particularly traditional land tenure system and demographic development.Consequently,forest resources have been degraded and a number of plant species have disappeared from the forests of the study area while several others are in the process of disappearance.  相似文献   

基于CFD的单个建筑物风场模拟参数选择     

薛筝筝  郭建侠  汤志亚  田东霞 《气象科技》2014,42(4):712-718

运用流体力学软件FloEFD对沽源单个建筑物周围的风场进行数值模拟。通过不断改变模型中计算参数的设置进行一系列模拟试验,对比模拟试验结果,并与观测资料进行比较,分析不同计算参数对模拟结果的影响,并获得适用于该模型的最佳参数。主要研究的计算参数包括计算域高度,初始网格等级,局部初始网格等级和不同平均风速剖面形式。结果表明:计算域高度从3倍建筑物高度开始,空腔区的长度、漩涡中心位置以及再发展区的边界位置基本保持稳定。随着初始网格等级的增加,空腔区的长度、再发展区的边界位置及计算时间逐渐增大。局部初始网格等级对模拟结果影响不显著。以两种不同平均风速剖面形式进行模拟,迎风漩涡长度不同,背风面影响不大。与观测资料比较显示,最优参数组合为:计算域高度为3倍建筑物高度,初始网格等级为4、局部初始网格等级为4、平均风速剖面形式为指数律。  相似文献   

黄土高原渭河宝鸡段北岸大型深层滑坡动力学机制研究   总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3  

辛鹏  吴树仁  石菊松  王涛  石玲 《地质学报》2014,88(7):1341-1352

为研究渭河盆地黄土塬边大型深层滑坡运动机制,通过对渭河宝鸡段北岸斜坡构造地貌过程解析、滑体地质剖面平衡计算与运动过程的动态数值模拟,结合黏土岩滑动带发育的宏观力学背景、物理结构变化特征与剪切蠕变、滑动力学行为特征研究,确定了渭河北岸大型深层滑坡的几何学、运动学特征,初步揭示了黏土岩质滑带塑性流动挤出的控滑机制。研究表明:①大型深层滑坡的运动变形由后缘向坡脚传递,后缘下降、前缘隆起,整体变形由底部泥岩控制,具有一定的水平位移,是旋转-平移复活式滑坡;②黏土岩滑动带结构损伤形成蠕变变形带,滑动过程中,塑性变形区在滑体下方呈倾斜三角形状,产生塑性流动变形,逆冲向上运动中形成翻卷结构,滑体前缘以流动状态隆起挤出;③黏土岩的塑性流动变形是黏土矿物含量增加、活性增强的结果,滑带土内的粘粒含量(2μm)由初始的17.94%增加到50.22%,蒙脱石的绝对含量从初始的13.19%增加至26.38%,而其比表面积平均由124.55增加至215.08,从而降低滑动带的强度、恶化水理性质,引起滑体剧烈变形,而滑体内赋存的高孔隙水压力可推动滑体滑动。  相似文献   

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987114000905     

Petar Gliovi  Alessandro M.Forte 《地学前缘(英文版)》2015,6(1):3-22

Although there has been significant progress in the seismic imaging of mantle heterogeneity,the outstanding issue that remains to be resolved is the unknown distribution of mantle temperature anomalies in the distant geological past that give rise to the present-day anomalies inferred by global tomography models.To address this question,we present 3-D convection models in compressible and self-gravitating mantle initialised by different hypothetical temperature patterns.A notable feature of our forward convection modelling is the use of self-consistent coupling of the motion of surface tectonic plates to the underlying mantle flow,without imposing prescribed surface velocities(i.e.,plate-like boundary condition).As an approximation for the surface mechanical conditions before plate tectonics began to operate we employ the no-slip(rigid) boundary condition.A rigid boundary condition demonstrates that the initial thermally-dominated structure is preserved,and its geographical location is fixed during the evolution of mantle flow.Considering the impact of different assumed surface boundary conditions(rigid and plate-like) on the evolution of thermal heterogeneity in the mantle we suggest that the intrinsic buoyancy of seven superplumes is most-likely resolved in the tomographic images of present-day mantle thermal structure.Our convection simulations with a plate-like boundary condition reveal that the evolution of an initial cold anomaly beneath the Java-Indonesian trench system yields a long-term,stable pattern of thermal heterogeneity in the lowermost mantle that resembles the presentday Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces(LLSVPs),especially below the Pacific.The evolution of subduction zones may be,however,influenced by the mantle-wide flow driven by deeply-rooted and longlived superplumes since Archean times.These convection models also detect the intrinsic buoyancy of the Perm Anomaly that has been identified as a unique slow feature distinct from the two principal LLSVPs.We find there is no need for dense chemical ’piles’ in the lower mantle to generate a stable distribution of temperature anomalies that are correlated to the LLSVPs and the Perm Anomaly.Our tomography-based convection simulations also demonstrate that intraplate volcanism in the south-east Pacific may be interpreted in terms of shallow small-scale convection triggered by a superplume beneath the East Pacific Rise.  相似文献