Paul Sánchez

TL;DR: In this article, the scaling of physical forces to the extremely low ambient gravitational acceleration regimes found on the surfaces of small asteroids is performed, and it is found that van der Waals cohesive forces between regolith grains on asteroid surfaces should be a dominant force and compete with particle weights and be greater, in general, than electrostatic and solar radiation pressure forces.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the hypothesis that small rubble pile asteroids have a small but non-zero cohesive strength, which creates a scale dependence with relative strength increasing as size decreases.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the hypothesis that small rubble pile asteroids have a small but non-zero cohesive strength, which creates a scale dependence with relative strength increasing as size decreases.

TL;DR: Combining the measured Bennu mass and shape obtained during the Preliminary Survey phase of the OSIRIS-REx mission, a notable transition is found in Bennu’s surface slopes within its rotational Roche lobe, defined as the region where material is energetically trapped to the surface.

TL;DR: In this article, a soft-sphere distinct element method was used to simulate asteroid regolith and rubble piles and then an algorithm to calculate self-gravity was derived and incorporated for full-scale simulations of rubble-pile asteroids using Granular Dynamics techniques.