Entitled ‘EROS’, the project could also inform future attempts to deflect any potentially dangerous asteroids heading for Earth.<\/p>
We spoke to Dr Susorney to find out more about asteroid mapping.<\/p>
More about space rocks:<\/strong><\/em><\/p> It stands for \u2018ExploRing the surface slopes Of aSteroids\u2019. I am trying to understand asteroid interiors by using observations of their surfaces.<\/p> I have been using data from spacecraft and the Arecibo Telescope to see if we can use models of asteroid shapes to do that.<\/p> For starters, it could tell us about the surface processes. For example, if you are walking around on Earth and you go to Cheddar Gorge in Somerset you will find it is really steep.<\/p> The reason is because the rock is intact and it won\u2019t flow down.<\/p> In contrast, when you build a sand castle on a beach, you can\u2019t make it very steep because the loose sand granules will flow down.<\/p> So we are looking at the slopes on asteroids to try and understand how intact they are, which also avoids having to send a mission to every asteroid to investigate.<\/p> We can understand a lot about how high or big slopes are on an asteroid remotely.<\/p> We have lots of shape models of asteroids and we have been looking at the slopes of the ones that we have visited with spacecraft, where we know a lot about the surface and the interior.<\/p> Next, we try to understand how we can compare that information to other space rocks that we don\u2019t know.<\/p> For example, asteroids that have smoother surfaces are more like Itokawa, which we think has lots of holes in it and a low density.<\/p> And asteroids with higher surface slopes are more like Eros<\/a>, visited by the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft, which has a more intact interior.<\/p> We mainly take shape models that have already been made \u2013 those that come from spacecraft observations tend to be the highest resolution.<\/p> We can then take shape models from Arecibo Telescope data \u2013 we have a tool that can take the internal density and look at how that affects the surface slope.<\/p> For the asteroids we\u2019ve visited we have very well-constrained data about densities.<\/p> You can see how the asteroid\u2019s gravity deflects the spacecraft slightly, so you can calculate its mass, and combining the mass and volume will give the density.<\/p> But there are hundreds of thousands of asteroids, so how do we say something about these with lower resolution data? That\u2019s really the goal.<\/p> The Arecibo Telescope would send out radio waves, which bounce off the surface of an asteroid and come back.<\/p> You have a computer model that starts with a basic asteroid shape, and it keeps changing the shape to try to match the observations.<\/p>What is the EROS project?<\/b><\/h2>
How does an asteroid\u2019s shape tell us about its interior?<\/b><\/h2>
![\"A](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2021\/11\/Asteroid-eros-9af053a.jpg\" "\\"\\"\/")
How do you estimate the shape of an asteroid?<\/b><\/h2>
![\"Asteroid](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2019\/12\/Itokawa-34d45fe.jpg\" "\\"\\"\/")
How do you use the data to understand asteroids?<\/b><\/h2>
![\"Images](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2020\/11\/PIA22185-f8c2fd6-e1605865448258.jpg\" "\\"\\"\/")
How is Arecibo data used?<\/b><\/h2>
![\"Rocks](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2020\/10\/full-1024x1024-a838432.png\" "\\"\\"\/")