Abstract
Light-curve observations have shown that most asteroids are non-axially symmetrical in shape, probably as a result of fragmentation undergone by objects with negligible gravitational binding1. Some earlier laboratory simulations of catastrophic collisions at velocities not exceeding 4 km s−1 (refs 2–4) against cubic and parallelepipedal targets showed that the fragment shapes have a nearly gaussian distribution around the mean value of the axes' ratio 2:√2:1. We report here results from hypervelocity experiments performed at ∼10 km s−1 against free-falling bodies. We found that, regardless of the very different experimental conditions, the shape distribution obtained is closely similar to that obtained2–4 using targets of different shapes and materials and in good agreement with that of the main-belt asteroids of diameter smaller than ∼100 km. This distribution is not consistent with either the symmetrical shapes of the gravity-dominated asteroids, or the elongated Apollo–Amor objects.
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Capaccioni, F., Cerroni, P., Coradini, M. et al. Shapes of asteroids compared with fragments from hypervelocity impact experiments. Nature 308, 832–834 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1038/308832a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/308832a0
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