Itokawa / Science
Science · Itokawa
These are six research papers, all free to read on arXiv, about Itokawa. We summarize each one in plain English from its abstract.
Our own artist's impression. No figures are taken from the papers.
Every number links to the paper it comes from.
How big Itokawa is, what shape it has and how it spins.
What they foundItokawa's effective diameter is about 0.32 km with an albedo of about 0.19, and its high thermal inertia points to a bare-rock surface.
Thermal-infrared observations from the ESO 3.6 m telescope in July 2004.
What they foundItokawa spins once every 12.1324 hours.
Ground-based light curves from three telescopes, 2001 to 2004.
Source for: Rotation period
What Itokawa is made of and how its surface behaves.
What they foundFirst global roughness maps of Itokawa show fine material sliding downhill into low areas and big blocks left on highs, unlike Eros, where craters dominate.
Analysis of Hayabusa shape data at 8 to 32 m scales.
What they foundSpace weathering darkens Itokawa's boulders in about 1,000 years (range 100 to 10,000).
Counting bright impact marks on boulders in Hayabusa AMICA images.
Source for: Space-weathering timescale
What they foundShaking from the impact that formed the 8-m Kamoi crater could have been strong enough to move surface material and refresh parts of Itokawa.
3D seismic-wave and landslide simulations.
How Itokawa moves, and the gravity and sunlight forces that shape its path.
What they foundA centre-of-mass shift of about 10 m could flip the predicted sign of the YORP spin change on Itokawa, and the theory favours a shift toward the neck.
Theory applied to the Itokawa shape model.
New papers on Itokawa, checked weekly, summarized after a person reads it.
No new papers on Itokawa this week. We check arXiv every week.
We search arXiv for Itokawa papers and keep the ones that add something new, are clearly written up and are relevant to a general reader. A person reads every abstract.
Summaries are written by us from each paper’s abstract, not copied. Diagrams are our own simplified drawings, not figures from the papers.
“Peer-reviewed” means arXiv lists a journal reference for the paper. Everything else is marked “Preprint”: shared openly, possibly before or without journal review.
Paper metadata courtesy of arXiv. Summaries written by us; read the original papers via the links. Paper metadata from arXiv.org, which does not endorse this site.