DPS Pasadena Meeting 2000, 23-27 October 2000
Session 8. Asteroid Posters I - Physical Studies
Displayed, 1:00pm, Monday - 1:00pm, Friday, Highlighted Tuesday and Thursday, 3:30-6:30pm, C101-C105, C211

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[8.02] Grooves and Ridges on Eros

L.M. Prockter (Applied Physics Laboratory), P. Thomas, J. Joseph (Cornell University), M. Robinson, A. Milne, D.J.B. Bussey (Northwestern University), J. Veverka (Cornell University), MSI/NIS Team

The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft has been in orbit around the S-class asteroid Eros since February 2000. Since then NEAR Shoemaker’s multi-spectral imaging camera (MSI) has returned tens of thousands of images of Eros’ entire surface at many different resolutions and viewing geometries. There exist a large number and variety of structural features on the asteroid’s surface, ranging from tens of kilometers to mere meters in scale. We classify these structures into three major classes on the basis of morphology and morphometry. These are: (1) global structures, including a hemispherical scale ridge and prominent wide troughs several kilometers in length; (2) regional structures, primarily chains of pits and straight edged grooves several hundreds of meters in length; and (3) local structures, such as closely-spaced ridge and trough textures tens of meters in scale, and relatively narrow fractures in the wall of a large crater. We are able to derive stratigraphic relationships between several of these structures, allowing the relative ages of some surface features to be determined. For example, the giant ridge on Eros appears to postdate both of the largest features on the surface, the "saddle" region, and the largest (5.3 km) crater. We will present a structural map of Eros showing the relationship of the ridges and grooves to each other and to nearby impact features. We will discuss the implications for this distribution on the question of whether Eros has an underlying tectonic fabric.


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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: Louise.Prockter@jhuapl.edu


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