The Characterization of Small Airless Bodies in Near-Earth Space From Telescopes and Laboratory Perspectives

Abstract

Characterizing airless bodies in the Solar System offers the particular opportunity to access information about conditions during the protoplanetary nebula and subsequent evolution. Those airless rocky bodies whose orbits bring them close to Earth are known as near-Earth objects (NEOs). These objects are ideal candidates to study since they can help us untangle the properties of those more distant and less accessible ones. Although NEOs contribute a fundamental source of knowledge, they also impose a risk of impact on Earth and, by extension, human civilization. Thus, characterizing them as individuals to inquire about the properties of the population is a priority in order to prevent a possible impact event properly. Using several telescopic facilities and laboratory experiments, the four chapters presented here aim to understand better the physical and chemical properties of NEOs. In this work, I explored general topics such as surface heterogeneity, space weathering, population taxonomies, and thermal modeling. I present the physical characterization of 2015 JD1 from ground-based radar, spectroscopy, and photometric observations, including discussions about the interesting and possibly unique surface features of this small airless body and implications for the existence of heterogeneous bodies in the NEO population. I investigated the causes and consequences of space weathering (i.e., micrometeorite bombardments) on carbonaceous chondrites and their implications for the primordial C-complex asteroids. I present science commissioning for MIRSI, the Mid-Infrared Spectrograph and Imager at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. Finally, I present a probabilistic taxonomic survey of very small NEOs using spectrophotometric observations and machine learning approaches. I discuss the implication of this survey for the compositional distribution of the small NEO population.