Session programme

The scope of this session covers all aspects of small solar system objects from comets and asteroids, to dust and meteoroids, as well as dwarf planets and other Kuiper belt objects. Topics include, but are not limited to, dynamics, evolution, physical properties, composition, and interactions. You are invited to present results obtained from space missions, remote sensing observations, laboratory studies, theory and numerical simulations. This session also provides a forum for presenting future space missions and instrumentation. Research results should preferably be presented from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

The JAXA and NASA space missions Hayabusa 2 and Osiris-Rex have the ambitious objective to orbit around two primitive carbonaceous Near Earth Asteroids (162173 Ryugu and 101955 Bennu) to understand the origin and evolution of the Solar System. The two missions will collect samples of the two bodies and return back them to the Earth for further and more accurate analysis in laboratory. At the time of the EGU Assembly, Hayabusa 2 will likely have already published their first results about Ryugu and Osiris-Rex will have started to survey of Bennu. This session is open to all the scientists directly involved in the two missions to show the first results obtained so far, and to discuss possible links between the two objects. Nevertheless, we invite all other scientists to present their scientific discussions, modelling, laboratory simulations about these two primitive NEA’s. We believe that this session is rare opportunity to show the hot scientific results of Hayabusa 2 and Osiris-Rex involving a scientific audience much wider than the specific planetary science community

This session aims to showcase recent results from Rosetta of its investigation of 67P/Churyumov –Gerasimenko. Studies involving and also combining simulation, theory and also other ground and space based observations are also very welcome.

The session should address all aspects of dust detection in space by both dedicated and non-dedicated dust detectors (i.e., electric field antennas, Faraday cups, etc.), theoretical approaches to detection mechanisms, and laboratory simulations of dust impact.

Solicited talk by Paul Kellogg (Minnesota Institute of Astrophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA) focused on the dust impacts detected by STEREO.

Asteroid impacts are crucial events for the evolution of Earth. Asteroids and comets may have transported some of the ingredients of life (water and organic molecules from the outer solar system to our planet. At the same time, there is strong evidence that impacts destroyed much of the life on earth multiple times. The last and most famous event is the impact of an order of 10 km sized object that led to the extinction of dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Those big impacts are rare, however, much smaller events can create large damage. The estimated age of Meteor Crater in Arizona, an impact crater of approximately 1.2 km in diameter, is only 50000 years. Only a century ago, in the Tunguska event on 30 June 1908, a small asteroid exploded in the atmosphere above Siberia and destroyed more than 2000 km2 of Forest. And very recently, in 2013, the impact of an only ~20 m asteroid damaged a large number of buildings in the Russian town of Chelyabinsk, luckily killing nobody, but injuring more than 1500 people. The question is not if another asteroid will get on a collision trajectory, but when it will happen.
For the first time in history, humankind is becoming able to prevent a catastrophic asteroid impact. Search programs are nearly complete for km-sized near-earth asteroids, and are striving to reach completeness for 100m-sized objects in the next years. Deflection of hazardous asteroids is in reach with current technology. In the International AIDA cooperation, NASA’s DART mission is in development for launch in 2021 for a deflection demonstration of asteroid Didymos in 2022. ESA’s Hera spacecraft, currently under study, is expected to follow on to study the impact effect in 2026.
Abstracts are invited covering all aspects of planetary defense: Search programs for near-earth asteroids, dynamical and physical characterization of potentially hazardous objects, theoretical studies of potential deflection methods, and all components of deflection missions.