Asteroid Regolith Mechanical Properties: Laboratory Experiments With Cohesive Powders
Abstract
Despite clear evidence that small asteroids undergo drastic physical evolution, the geophysics and mechanics of many of the processes governing that evolution remain a mystery due to a lack of scientific data, both on the sub-surface and global geophysics of these small bodies and on the mechanical properties of regoliths in the unique micro-gravity regime they inhabit. We are beginning a three-year effort to study regolith properties and processes on low-gravity, small asteroids by conducting analog experiments with cohesive powders in a 1-g laboratory environment. Based on a rigorous comparison of forces it can be shown that van der Waals cohesive forces between millimeter to centimeter-sized grains on asteroids ranging in size from Eros to Itokawa, respectively, may exceed their ambient weight several-fold. This observation implies that regoliths composed of impact debris of those sizes should behave on the microgravity surfaces of small asteroids like flour or other cohesive powders do in the 1-g environment here on Earth. Our goal is to develop an improved understanding of the role of cohesion in affecting regolith processes and surface morphology of small Solar System bodies, some the targets of ongoing and proposed NASA New Frontiers and Discovery missions, and to quantify the range of expected mechanical properties of such regoliths. Our experiments will be conducted in ambient and vacuum conditions within an environmental test chamber at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation (BATC) in Boulder, CO. To aid in validating our experiment chamber and support equipment performance, and before proceeding with experiments on geologic regolith simulant materials, we will perform a series of comparative, ‘calibration’ experiments with micro glass spheres; all primary experiments will be performed with at least one non-idealized regolith simulant, like JSC-1, that more realistically simulates the angular particle shapes expected in actual geologic fragments generated from impact comminution.
- Publication:
-
AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #44
- Pub Date:
- October 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012DPS....4410504D