The spatial distribution of impact craters on Ryugu

Hirata, Naoyuki; Morota, Tomokatsu; Cho, Yuichiro; Kanamaru, Masanori; Watanabe, Sei-ichiro; Sugita, Seiji; Hirata, Naru; Yamamoto, Yukio; Noguchi, Rina; Shimaki, Yuri; Tatsumi, Eri; Yoshioka, Kazuo; Sawada, Hirotaka; Yokota, Yasuhiro; Sakatani, Naoya; Hayakawa, Masahiko; Matsuoka, Moe; Honda, Rie; Kameda, Shingo; Yamada, Manabu; Kouyama, Toru; Suzuki, Hidehiko; Honda, Chikatoshi; Ogawa, Kazunori; Tsuda, Yuichi; Yoshikawa, Makoto; Saiki, Takanao; Tanaka, Satoshi; Terui, Fuyuto; Nakazawa, Satoru; Kikuchi, Shota; Yamaguchi, Tomohiro; Ogawa, Naoko; Ono, Go; Mimasu, Yuya; Yoshikawa, Kent; Takahashi, Tadateru; Takei, Yuto; Fujii, Atsushi; Takeuchi, Hiroshi; Okada, Tatsuaki; Shirai, Kei; Iijima, Yu-ichi
Bibliographical reference

Icarus

Advertised on:
3
2020
Journal
Number of authors
43
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
15
Refereed citations
15
Description
Asteroid 162173 Ryugu has numerous craters. The initial measurement of impact craters on Ryugu, by Sugita et al. (2019), is based on Hayabusa2 ONC images obtained during the first month after the arrival of Hayabusa2 in June 2018. Utilizing new images taken until February 2019, we constructed a global impact crater catalogue of Ryugu, which includes all craters larger than 20 m in diameter on the surface of Ryugu. As a result, we identified 77 craters on the surface of Ryugu. Ryugu shows variation in crater density which cannot be explained by the randomness of cratering; there are more craters at lower latitudes and fewer at higher latitudes, and fewer craters in the western bulge (160°E - 290°E) than in the region around the meridian (300°E - 30°E). This variation implies a complicated geologic history for Ryugu. It seems that the variation in crater density indicates that the equatorial ridge located in the western hemisphere is relatively young, while that located in the eastern hemisphere is a fossil structure formed during the short rotational period in the distant past.
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Minor Bodies of the Solar System
This project studies the physical and compositional properties of the so-called minor bodies of the Solar System, that includes asteroids, icy objects, and comets. Of special interest are the trans-neptunian objects (TNOs), including those considered the most distant objects detected so far (Extreme-TNOs or ETNOs); the comets and the comet-asteroid
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