@article{cdbe12382bad4942a598515f69a6b273,
title = "A common origin for dynamically associated near-Earth asteroid pairs",
abstract = "Though pairs of dynamically associated asteroids in the Main Belt have been identified and studied for over a decade, very few pair systems have been identified in the near-Earth asteroid population. We present data and analysis that supports the existence of two genetically related pairs in near-Earth space. The members of the individual systems, 2015 EE7 – 2015 FP124 and 2017 SN16 – 2018 RY7, are found to be of the same spectral taxonomic class, and both pairs are interpreted to have volatile-poor compositions. In conjunction with dynamical arguments, this suggests that these two systems formed via YORP spin-up and/or dissociation of a binary precursor. Backwards orbital integrations suggest a separation age of <10 kyr for the pair 2017 SN16 – 2018 RY7, making these objects amongst the youngest multiple asteroid systems known to date. A unique separation age was not realized for 2015 EE7 – 2015 FP124 due to large uncertainties associated with these objects' orbits. Determining the ages of such young pairs is of great value for testing models of space weathering and asteroid spin-state evolution. As the NEO catalog continues to grow with current and future discovery surveys, it is expected that more NEO pairs will be found, thus providing an ideal laboratory for studying time dependent evolutionary processes that are relevant to asteroids throughout the Solar System.",
keywords = "Asteroids, Asteroids, Dynamics, Near-Earth objects",
author = "Moskovitz, {Nicholas A.} and Petr Fatka and Davide Farnocchia and Maxime Devog{\`e}le and David Polishook and Thomas, {Cristina A.} and Michael Mommert and Avner, {Louis D.} and Binzel, {Richard P.} and Brian Burt and Eric Christensen and Francesca DeMeo and Mary Hinkle and Hora, {Joseph L.} and Mitchell Magnusson and Robert Matson and Michael Person and Brian Skiff and Audrey Thirouin and David Trilling and Wasserman, {Lawrence H.} and Mark Willman",
note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to two anonymous referees for their careful reading of this manuscript, which led to significant improvements. Primary funding support for this work was provided by NASA grant numbers NNX14AN82G and NNX17AH06G (PI N. Moskovitz) issued through the Near-Earth Object Observations program to the Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS). We are grateful to Matthew Knight (U. Maryland) and David Schleicher (Lowell Obs.) for using Lowell's Discovery Channel Telescope to obtain images of 2018 RY7 in December 2018. We acknowledge the great value and utility of the Asteroid Lightcurve Database (ALCDEF, alcdef.org ) from which we retrieved archival photometry of 2015 EE7. P. Fatka was supported by the Charles University , project GA UK No. 842218 . D. Farnocchia conducted this research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. FED acknowledges funding from NASA under Grant No. 80NSSC18K0849 issued through the Planetary Astronomy Program. J. Snow is grateful to D.S. for assistance beyond the wall. Results presented here were based on observations obtained at the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope, which is a joint project of the Minist{\'e}rio da Ci{\^e}ncia, Tecnologia, Inova{\c c}{\~o}es e Comunica{\c c}{\~o}es (MCTIC) do Brasil, the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), and Michigan State University (MSU), and on observations obtained at the Gemini-South Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnolog{\'i}a e Innovaci{\'o}n Productiva (Argentina), Minist{\'e}rio da Ci{\^e}ncia, Tecnologia e Inova{\c c}{\~a}o (Brazil), and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 Elsevier Inc.",
year = "2019",
month = nov,
day = "15",
doi = "10.1016/j.icarus.2019.05.030",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "333",
pages = "165--176",
journal = "Icarus",
issn = "0019-1035",
publisher = "Academic Press Inc.",
}