'Rubble Pile' Asteroids Are Surprisingly Hard to Kill
upstart writes:
Rubble pile asteroids are more common and durable than previously thought, according to new research. The scientists behind the study say this could pose a problem for planetary defense measures. But there may be reason for optimism, given recent insights gleaned from NASA's successful DART mission to deflect an asteroid.
Once just a hypothesis, rubble pile asteroids appear to be a common fixture of the solar system, as evidenced by missions to asteroids Itokawa, Ryugu, Bennu, and Dimorphos, the latter asteroid not yet officially confirmed as such but very likely is. As the name suggests, rubble pile asteroids are loosely bound conglomerations of rock and dust held together by exceptionally weak gravity. And by weak, I mean weak; the forces involved at the surface are comparable to the weight imposed by a couple of pieces of paper held in your hand.
[...] The researchers analyzed dust particles brought back to Earth in 2010 by the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa 1 probe, which extracted surface samples from the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa five years earlier. [...]
Or as Jourdan explained in a Curtin press release: "In short, we found that Itokawa is like a giant space cushion, and very hard to destroy." And because rubble pile asteroids are hard to destroy, the solar system is likely chock full of them.
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