close
Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Dec 12:3:3411.
doi: 10.1038/srep03411.

The ginger-shaped asteroid 4179 Toutatis: new observations from a successful flyby of Chang'e-2

Jiangchuan Huang  1 , Jianghui Ji  2 , Peijian Ye  3 , Xiaolei Wang  4 , Jun Yan  5 , Linzhi Meng  6 , Su Wang  7 , Chunlai Li  5 , Yuan Li  8 , Dong Qiao  9 , Wei Zhao  10 , Yuhui Zhao  7 , Tingxin Zhang  3 , Peng Liu  10 , Yun Jiang  7 , Wei Rao  6 , Sheng Li  11 , Changning Huang  12 , Wing-Huen Ip  13 , Shoucun Hu  7 , Menghua Zhu  8 , Liangliang Yu  7 , Yongliao Zou  5 , Xianglong Tang  10 , Jianyang Li  14 , Haibin Zhao  7 , Hao Huang  6 , Xiaojun Jiang  5 , Jinming Bai  15
Affiliations

The ginger-shaped asteroid 4179 Toutatis: new observations from a successful flyby of Chang'e-2

Jiangchuan Huang et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

On 13 December 2012, Chang'e-2 conducted a successful flyby of the near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis at a closest distance of 770 ± 120 meters from the asteroid's surface. The highest-resolution image, with a resolution of better than 3 meters, reveals new discoveries on the asteroid, e.g., a giant basin at the big end, a sharply perpendicular silhouette near the neck region, and direct evidence of boulders and regolith, which suggests that Toutatis may bear a rubble-pile structure. Toutatis' maximum physical length and width are (4.75 × 1.95 km) ±10%, respectively, and the direction of the +z axis is estimated to be (250 ± 5°, 63 ± 5°) with respect to the J2000 ecliptic coordinate system. The bifurcated configuration is indicative of a contact binary origin for Toutatis, which is composed of two lobes (head and body). Chang'e-2 observations have significantly improved our understanding of the characteristics, formation, and evolution of asteroids in general.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Outbound images of Toutatis acquired on 13 December, 2012 during Chang'e-2 flyby, indicative of the spacecraft being away from the asteroid (from a to e).
The left side of Toutatis is blocked by the solar panel in images a–d. The imaging distance (D), epoch of flyby (T, UTC) and resolution of each image (R) are shown for each snapshot, where the distance error for a is 1.1 km. The resolution of each image is linear with the distance.
Figure 2
Figure 2. All kinds of geological features on the Toutatis' surface.
(a) All craters (blue profiles) and boulders (red squares) are outlined in the panoramic image of Toutatis. Two craters are closely distributed: the smaller crater (B) seemed to superimpose on the larger one (A). Green lines indicate the lineaments. Black arrows point the flow direction of the fine-grained regolith. (b) The enlarged portion shown (white box) in the left panel (a). A morphological-integrity crater can be observed. Tens of boulders are randomly distributed around.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) The relative size-frequency distribution for craters on Toutatis. (b) The cumulative size-frequency distribution for craters on Toutatis. In panel (a) R plot was devised by the Crater Analysis Techniques Working Group to better show the size distribution of craters and crater number densities for determining relative ages. The vertical position of the curve is a measure of crater density or relative age on the Toutatis: the higher the vertical position, the higher the crater density and the older the surface. In panel (b) x-axis stands for the crater diameter and y-axis represents the crater number larger than corresponding diameter on the investigated area. CSFD would easily inform that the size of craters distribute as diameters increase.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Huang J. C. et al. The engineering parameters analysis of (4179) Toutatis flyby mission of Chang'e-2. Science China Technological Sciences 43, 596–601 (2013).
    1. Hudson R. S. & Ostro S. J. Shape and non-principal axis spin state of Asteroid 4179 Toutatis. Science 270, 84–86 (1995).
    1. Ostro S. J. et al. Radar images of Asteroid 4179 Toutatis. Science 270, 80–83 (1995).
    1. Ostro S. J. et al. Asteroid 4179 Toutatis: 1996 radar observations. Icarus 137, 122–139 (1999).
    1. Hudson R. S., Ostro S. J. & Scheeres D. J. High-resolution model of Asteroid 4179 Toutatis. Icarus 161, 346–355 (2003).

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources