TY - JOUR
T1 - The ginger-shaped asteroid 4179 Toutatis
T2 - New observations from a successful flyby of chang'e-2
AU - Huang, Jiangchuan
AU - Ji, Jianghui
AU - Ye, Peijian
AU - Wang, Xiaolei
AU - Yan, Jun
AU - Meng, Linzhi
AU - Wang, Su
AU - Li, Chunlai
AU - Li, Yuan
AU - Qiao, Dong
AU - Zhao, Wei
AU - Zhao, Yuhui
AU - Zhang, Tingxin
AU - Liu, Peng
AU - Jiang, Yun
AU - Rao, Wei
AU - Li, Sheng
AU - Huang, Changning
AU - Ip, Wing Huen
AU - Hu, Shoucun
AU - Zhu, Menghua
AU - Yu, Liangliang
AU - Zou, Yongliao
AU - Tang, Xianglong
AU - Li, Jianyang
AU - Zhao, Haibin
AU - Huang, Hao
AU - Jiang, Xiaojun
AU - Bai, Jinming
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Michael W. Busch for his constructive comments that greatly helped to improve the original content of this manuscript. We thank the whole Chang’e-2 team to make the mission a success. We appreciate B. Yang for target observations before the flyby mission. We are grateful to R. P. Butler for English improvement of this manuscript. This research was supported by National Science and Technology Major Project, National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Innovative and Interdisciplinary program by CAS, and Key Laboratory of Planetary Sciences (2013DP173302), CAS. JYL’s contribution to this work is not supported by any funds.
PY - 2013/12/12
Y1 - 2013/12/12
N2 - On 13 December 2012, Chang'e-2 conducted a successful flyby of the near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis at a closest distance of 770 ± 120 meters from the asteroid's surface. The highest-resolution image, with a resolution of better than 3 meters, reveals new discoveries on the asteroid, e.g., a giant basin at the big end, a sharply perpendicular silhouette near the neck region, and direct evidence of boulders and regolith, which suggests that Toutatis may bear a rubble-pile structure. Toutatis' maximum physical length and width are (4.75 × 1.95â.km) ±10%, respectively, and the direction of the +z axis is estimated to be (250 ± 5, 63 ± 5) with respect to the J2000 ecliptic coordinate system. The bifurcated configuration is indicative of a contact binary origin for Toutatis, which is composed of two lobes (head and body). Chang'e-2 observations have significantly improved our understanding of the characteristics, formation, and evolution of asteroids in general.
AB - On 13 December 2012, Chang'e-2 conducted a successful flyby of the near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis at a closest distance of 770 ± 120 meters from the asteroid's surface. The highest-resolution image, with a resolution of better than 3 meters, reveals new discoveries on the asteroid, e.g., a giant basin at the big end, a sharply perpendicular silhouette near the neck region, and direct evidence of boulders and regolith, which suggests that Toutatis may bear a rubble-pile structure. Toutatis' maximum physical length and width are (4.75 × 1.95â.km) ±10%, respectively, and the direction of the +z axis is estimated to be (250 ± 5, 63 ± 5) with respect to the J2000 ecliptic coordinate system. The bifurcated configuration is indicative of a contact binary origin for Toutatis, which is composed of two lobes (head and body). Chang'e-2 observations have significantly improved our understanding of the characteristics, formation, and evolution of asteroids in general.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84890721142&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/srep03411
DO - 10.1038/srep03411
M3 - 期刊論文
AN - SCOPUS:84890721142
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 3
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
M1 - 3411
ER -