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Thermal decomposition as the activity driver of near-Earth asteroid (3200) Phaethon

Nature Astronomy volume 8, pages 60–68 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Near-Earth asteroid (3200) Phaethon exhibits activity during its perihelion passage at 0.14 au from the Sun and is the likely parent body of the annual Geminid meteor shower. Its low albedo and featureless B-type reflectance spectrum indicate a primitive composition, but a definitive meteorite analogue is currently indeterminate. Here we analyse a mid-infrared emissivity spectrum of Phaethon and find that it most closely matches the Yamato group (CY) of carbonaceous chondrites. The CY chondrites experienced aqueous alteration and recent thermal metamorphism in which extreme temperatures caused mineral decomposition, resulting in the production of gas species. Temperatures within Phaethon during its close approach to the Sun are conducive to the thermal decomposition of carbonates, iron sulfides and phyllosilicates that release CO2, S2 and H2O gas, respectively. Spectral detection of these minerals strongly implies that gas release from mineral decomposition is capable of triggering dust ejection. The planned flyby of Phaethon by the DESTINY+ spacecraft in 2028 will allow us to verify this hypothesis.

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Fig. 1: Modelled mid-IR emissivity spectrum of Phaethon.
Fig. 2: Spectral comparison between Phaethon and various meteorite samples.
Fig. 3: Modelled spectrum and component mineral spectra.
Fig. 4: Temperatures estimated at one diurnal thermal skin depth beneath the subsurface and surface of Phaethon during perihelion passage.
Fig. 5: Modeled gas pressures and production.

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Data availability

All datasets analysed in this study are publicly available. The mid-infrared flux spectrum of Phaethon measured by the Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Spectrograph instrument (AOR 4890624) is publicly available on the Spitzer Heritage Archive (https://sha.ipac.caltech.edu/). The reduced spectrum was published in ref. 26 and shared with the author(s) by Joshua P. Emery, a co-author of that study. Laboratory spectra of meteorites and minerals (Supplementary Table 2) can be downloaded from the RELAB database via the PDS Geosciences Node Spectral Library (https://pds-speclib.rsl.wustl.edu/), ASU (https://speclib.asu.edu) and CRISM spectral libraries (http://speclib.rsl.wustl.edu/).

Code availability

The orbTPM code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/cosmicdustbeing/asteroid-thermal. R packages (stats) are publicly available for download.

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Acknowledgements

This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA. We thank J. P. Emery for sharing the previously published Spitzer-IRS spectrum of Phaethon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Eric MacLennan & Mikael Granvik

  2. Asteroid Engineering Laboratory, Luleå University of Technology, Kiruna, Sweden

    Mikael Granvik

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Contributions

E.M. conceived the original idea, carried out the analysis, interpreted the results and was lead writer of the paper. M.G. assisted with the interpretation of results and provided consultation for the paper. Both authors discussed the results and contributed to the final paper.

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Correspondence to Eric MacLennan.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Tomoko Arai, Carey Lisse and Martin Suttle for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Meteorite principal component analysis results.

Principal components (PC#) of mid-infrared spectra of carbonaceous chondrites. Datapoints are labeled and colored by their meteorite group with ‘CMh’ indicating naturally heated carbonaceous chondrites and ‘Mur’ corresponding to samples of the Murchison meteorite heated to the indicated temperature. Phaethon is indicated by the red star.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Decomposition model results for different materials.

Fraction of decomposed material (carbonate, phyllosilicate, or sulfide in panels a., b., and c., respectively) after one perihelion passage as a function of depth beneath the surface, expressed in terms of the thermal skin depth (ls)42.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Comparison between the visible and near-infrared reflectance spectra of Phaethon and CY meteorites.

Visible and near-infrared reflectance spectra of Phaethon and two CY meteorites ground into different size fractions or left as whole rock ‘chips’. The 1σ uncertainty for each reflectance value are shown as orange vertical bars. The blue line represents the average near-infrared (0.75 − 2.5 μm) spectral slope of 2005 UD, as observed by Kareta et al. (2021)20.

Extended Data Table 1 Spectral mixing models with different olivine and carbonate components
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1-3.

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MacLennan, E., Granvik, M. Thermal decomposition as the activity driver of near-Earth asteroid (3200) Phaethon. Nat Astron 8, 60–68 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02091-w

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