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Solar System evolution from compositional mapping of the asteroid belt

Nature volume 505, pages 629–634 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Advances in the discovery and characterization of asteroids over the past decade have revealed an unanticipated underlying structure that points to a dramatic early history of the inner Solar System. The asteroids in the main asteroid belt have been discovered to be more compositionally diverse with size and distance from the Sun than had previously been known. This implies substantial mixing through processes such as planetary migration and the subsequent dynamical processes.

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Figure 1: The asteroid belt in context with the planets.
Figure 2: Cartoon of the effects of planetary migration on the asteroid belt.
Figure 3: The compositional mass distribution throughout the asteroid belt out to the Trojans.
Figure 4: The compositional mass distribution as a function of size throughout the main belt out to the Trojans.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to R. Binzel for help in shaping this review, and to K. Walsh, W. Bottke, N. Moskovitz, D. Polishook, T. Burbine, J. Wisdom and A. Morales for discussions. We thank C. Chapman for a review. We acknowledge support from the ESAC faculty for F.E.D.’s visit. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number 0907766 and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under grant number NNX12AL26G. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through the Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF-51319.01-A, awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555. F.E.D. is a Hubble Fellow.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, MS-16, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA,

    F. E. DeMeo

  2. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    F. E. DeMeo

  3. Institut de Mécanique Céleste et de Calcul des Éphémérides, Observatoire de Paris, UMR8028 CNRS, 77 avenue Denfert-Rochereau, 75014 Paris, France,

    B. Carry

  4. European Space Astronomy (ESA) Centre, PO Box 78, Villanueva de la Cañada 28691, Madrid, Spain,

    B. Carry

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Both authors worked jointly on the scientific analysis that resulted in Figs 3 and 4. F.E.D. led the manuscript writing effort and B.C. created the figures.

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Correspondence to F. E. DeMeo.

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DeMeo, F., Carry, B. Solar System evolution from compositional mapping of the asteroid belt. Nature 505, 629–634 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12908

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