Asteroids, Comets, Meteors - ACM2017 - Montevideo PRIMITIVE ASTEROIDS SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY – PRIMASS: CURRENT STATUS
N. Pinilla-Alonso1, J. de Leon2,3, D. Morate2,3, M. De Pra4, J. Licandro2,3, H. Campins5, V. Lorenzi6,2, Z. Landsman5, V. Alí-Lagoa7 1
Florida Space Institute,12354 Research Parkway, Parthnership1 Building, Suite 214, Orlando, FL 32826-0650 (USA,
[email protected]), 2Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna (Spain), 3 Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (Spain), 4Observatório Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, (Brazil), 5University of Central Florida, Orlando (USA), 6Fundación Galileo Galilei – INAF, La Palma (Spain), 7Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, German Introduction: Primitive asteroids contain the most pristine material that gave birth to the rocky planets and hold key information to understand the formation and evolution of the Solar System. The demand of spectral data from primitive asteroids, suspected to be the source of the primitive near-Earth asteroids, has abruptly increased in the anticipation of the samplereturn missions that will reach their targets in the next five years [1,2,3,4]. Concurrently, the recent discovery of water ice on the surface of two primitive asteroids at semi-major axis larger than 2.8 AU (24 Themis and 65 Cybele ref, ref) placed the focus on the outer-belt where more asteroids could harbor water-ice layers (on, or bellow the surface) and contain an important amount of volatiles. In 2010 we started a survey, called the PRIMitive Asteroids Spectroscopic Survey (PRIMASS), to collect spectra of primitive asteroids all through the Solar System. Aims: The aim of this survey is to provide the community with a comprehensive collection of data that enable us to study the surface composition of primitive asteroids by means of visible and near-infrared spectroscopy. Methods: Ground-based observations have historically demonstrated to be crucial to achieve a better understanding of the physical properties of planets comets, and asteroids targeted by the exploration programs of the most important space agencies (NASA, ESA, JAXA), and to support them in the planning of future missions. PRIMASS uses a variety of ground-based facilities [ref,ref,ref,ref]: NASA’s 3.0m Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea (Hawaii, USA), the 4.1m Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR, participated by NOAO), at Cerro Pachón (Chile); and three telescopes located at the El Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM, La Palma, Spain), the
10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) and the 3.6m Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG). Results: Up to now, PRIMASS contains more than 400 spectra. A major part of this data (~ 280 spectra) have already been published [5,6,7,8]. Another part is under analysis and some papers are in preparation. The plan for PRIMASS is to continue observing at least for four more semesters (up to semester 2018B). After almost 10 years of data acquisition, the PRIMASS database will contain about 700 spectra of primitive asteroids in the inner and outer belt. In this work we present the current state of the PRIMASS survey, and we include major results from the data already analyzed. Finally, we will draft the plans for the future. Acknowledgments: We acknowledge the Time Allocation Committees of the different telescopes that have been (and will be) used during this survey (i.e. GTC, IRTF, TNG, WHT, SOAR). We also acknowledge a number of colleagues that have participated at different stages of this project. JdL acknowledges financial support from MINECO under the 2015 Severo Ochoa Program SEV-2015-0548. JdL and DM acknowledge support from the AYA201567772-R (MINECO) References: [1] Abell et al. (2015) Asteroids IV, 855-880; [2] Lauretta et al. (2010) Metorit. Planet. Sci (supplement) 73, 5153 [3] Tsuda et al. (2013) Acta Astronaut. 91, 356–362. doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2013.06.028; [4] Mazanek et al., (2015) Acta Astronautica, 117, 163171. [5] J. de León, et al. (2012) Icarus, 218,196 - 206. [6] Pinilla-Alonso et al. (2016) Icarus, 274, p. 231-248; [7] De Leon et al. (2016) Icarus, 266, p. 57-75; [8] Morate et al. (2016) A&A, 586, id.A129.
