Toutatis / Science
Science · Toutatis
These are six research papers, all free to read on arXiv, about Toutatis. We summarize each one in plain English from its abstract.
Our own artist's impression. No figures are taken from the papers.
Every number links to the paper it comes from.
How big Toutatis is, what shape it has and how it spins.
What they foundChang'e-2 flew within about 770 m of Toutatis and found a ginger-root shape about 4.75 × 1.95 km, with a giant basin, boulders and regolith.
Images from China's Chang'e-2 flyby on 13 December 2012.
Source for: Maximum length
What they foundCombining flyby images and decades of radar pinned down Toutatis's orientation and its tumbling spin state.
Chang'e-2 images plus ground-based radar.
What Toutatis is made of and how its surface behaves.
What they foundToutatis has a geometric albedo of about 0.185, typical of S-type asteroids.
KMTNet telescope photometry at opposition in April 2018, corrected with the radar shape model.
Source for: Geometric albedo
What they foundToutatis's surface looks like an undifferentiated L-chondrite meteorite.
Spectral analysis of its reflected light.
Where Toutatis came from and how it formed and changed over time.
What they foundToutatis's stretched two-lobed shape could have formed when a separated binary passed close to Earth, its two parts collided slowly, and Earth's tides stretched the result.
Numerical simulations of a binary asteroid passing Earth, compared with Chang'e-2 images.
Spacecraft that have visited, or are planned to study, Toutatis.
What they foundThe flyby images show an 800-m depression at one end, a sharp neck and many boulders.
Chang'e-2 flyby observations.
New papers on Toutatis, checked weekly, summarized after a person reads it.
No new papers on Toutatis this week. We check arXiv every week.
We search arXiv for Toutatis papers and keep the ones that add something new, are clearly written up and are relevant to a general reader. A person reads every abstract.
Summaries are written by us from each paper’s abstract, not copied. Diagrams are our own simplified drawings, not figures from the papers.
“Peer-reviewed” means arXiv lists a journal reference for the paper. Everything else is marked “Preprint”: shared openly, possibly before or without journal review.
Paper metadata courtesy of arXiv. Summaries written by us; read the original papers via the links. Paper metadata from arXiv.org, which does not endorse this site.