Author: Shantanu Naidu

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13:

In the past 15 years, three previously unrecognized sub-populations of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) have been discovered. About 15% of NEAs are binaries, at least 10% of NEAs are contact binaries, and dozens of asteroid pairs have been identified. Numerous science questions have arisen about the formation and evolution processes of these systems and about the inter-relationships between these groups. Addressing these questions informs us about a wide range of important solar system processes that shape small bodies and planetesimals. Here I have chosen to focus on providing one of the most complete characterizations of a binary system among all known asteroid binaries, and on studying the spin-orbit interactions in this and 8 additional binary systems. One hypothesis that has not been fully explored is the possibility of chaotic rotation of asteroid satellites and the impact that such a state has on the evolution of the binary systems. I examine this problem as well as the possibility of detecting librational motions in synchronous satellites. Because the Arecibo and Goldstone radar systems enable superb characterizations of binaries and NEAs in general, this dissertation makes abundant use of radar data. Radar observations provide images of asteroids at decameter resolution, and these images can be inverted to determine the 3D shapes of the components, which are essential to properly model the system dynamics. Radar data also enable precise determination of the mutual orbit, which is another crucial ingredient. In the first two chapters of the dissertation, I describe the observations and physical characterizations of asteroid 2000~ET70 and binary asteroid 2000 DP107. The characterization of 2000 DP107 includes size, shape, spin, mass, and density of each component, making this binary one of the best-characterized asteroid binary to date. In the last chapter of the dissertation, I describe a computationally efficient fourth-order numerical integrator that I used to investigate the coupled spin and orbital dynamics of the satellites of NEAs. The speed of the integrator enabled multi-year timescale simulations of 9 well-characterized binary near-Earth asteroids. The numerical simulations illuminate a range of rotational regimes for asteroid satellites and the conditions under which the various regimes prevail. One of the rotational regimes is chaotic, and I find that this rotation state can substantially delay the radiative evolution of binary systems.