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We only have 2 examples, but both this and the Rosetta mission object were rubber-duck-shaped. Is this very common?
by ajuc 8y ago
We only have 2 examples, but both this and the Rosetta mission object were rubber-duck-shaped. Is this very common?
- peter303 8y ago14 missions to comets, 20 to asteroids, and around 50 planetary small moons imaged well enough to see their shapes. Under a hundred miles in diameter many have irregular shapes. I would guess this shape only occurs a few percent of the time. Wednesdays news conference speculated UT shape is primordial, while the others may have been carved through four billion years of planetary evolution.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoIt's pretty common. Based on radar data about 10-15% of Near Earth asteroids (larger than 200 meters) are contact binaries (or contact-binary shaped at least). We don't have enough data on main belt asteroids, trojan asteroids, and especially TNOs/KBOs to say what the percentages look like for those populations but it's a fair likelihood that the proportions are at least as high if not higher among KBOs.