Asteroids Do Have Satellites

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					                                                                                    Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites   289

                                           Asteroids Do Have Satellites
                                                     William J. Merline
                                                   Southwest Research Institute

                                                Stuart J. Weidenschilling
                                                     Planetary Science Institute

                                                       Daniel D. Durda
                                                   Southwest Research Institute

                                                      Jean-Luc Margot
                                                 California Institute of Technology

                                                          Petr Pravec
                                        Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences
                                                     of the Czech Republic

                                                        Alex D. Storrs
                                                         Towson University

                      After years of speculation, satellites of asteroids have now been shown definitively to exist.
                  Asteroid satellites are important in at least two ways: (1) They are a natural laboratory in which
                  to study collisions, a ubiquitous and critically important process in the formation and evolu-
                  tion of the asteroids and in shaping much of the solar system, and (2) their presence allows to
                  us to determine the density of the primary asteroid, something which otherwise (except for
                  certain large asteroids that may have measurable gravitational influence on, e.g., Mars) would
                  require a spacecraft flyby, orbital mission, or sample return. Binaries have now been detected
                  in a variety of dynamical populations, including near-Earth, main-belt, outer main-belt, Tro-
                  jan, and transneptunian regions. Detection of these new systems has been the result of improved
                  observational techniques, including adaptive optics on large telescopes, radar, direct imaging,
                  advanced lightcurve analysis, and spacecraft imaging. Systematics and differences among the
                  observed systems give clues to the formation mechanisms. We describe several processes that
                  may result in binary systems, all of which involve collisions of one type or another, either physi-
                  cal or gravitational. Several mechanisms will likely be required to explain the observations.

                  1.   INTRODUCTION                                  sons between, for example, asteroid taxonomic types and
                                                                     our inventory of meteorites. In general, uncertainties in the
1.1.   Overview                                                      asteroid size will dominate the uncertainty in density. We
                                                                     define satellites to be small secondaries, a double asteroid to
   Discovery and study of small satellites of asteroids or           be a system with components of similar size, and a binary
double asteroids can yield valuable information about the            to be any two-component system, regardless of size ratio.
intrinsic properties of asteroids themselves as well as their            Similarities and differences among the detected systems
history and evolution. Determination of orbits of these              reveal important clues about possible formation mecha-
moons can provide precise determination of the total (pri-           nisms. Systematics are already being seen among the main-
mary + secondary) mass of the system. In the case of a               belt binaries; many of them are C-like and several are fam-
small secondary, the total mass is dominated by the primary.         ily members. There are several theories to explain the origin
For a binary with a determinable size ratio of components            of these binary systems, all of them involving disruption
(e.g., double asteroids), an assumption of similar densities         of the parent object, either by physical collision or gravita-
can yield individual masses. If the actual sizes of the pri-         tional interaction during a close pass to a planet. It is likely
mary or the pair are also known, then reliable estimates of          that several of the mechanisms will be required to explain
the primary’s bulk density — a fundamental property — can            the observations.
be made. This reveals much about the composition and                     The presence of a satellite provides a real-life laboratory
structure of the primary and will allow us to make compari-          to study the outcome of collisions and gravitational inter-

290       Asteroids III

actions. The current population probably reflects a steady-        pected binaries has been shown to be real, despite rather
state process of creation and destruction. The nature and          intensive study with modern techniques.
prevalence of these systems will therefore help us under-              In the 1980s, additional lines of evidence were pursued,
stand the collisional environment in which they formed and         including asteroids with slow rotation, asteroids with fast
will have further implications for the role of collisions in       rotation, and the existence of doublet craters on, e.g., the
shaping our solar system. They will also provide clues to          Moon or Earth. Cellino et al. (1985) studied 10 asteroids
the dynamical history and evolution of the asteroids.              that showed anomalous lightcurves, which they compared
    A decade ago, binary asteroids were mostly a theoretical       with predictions from models of equilibrium binaries of
curiosity, despite sporadic unconfirmed satellite detections.      varying mass ratios by Leone et al. (1984). Model separa-
In 1993, the Galileo spacecraft made the first undeniable          tions and magnitude differences for these putative binaries
detection of an asteroid moon with the discovery of Dactyl,        were given; most of these could have been detected using
a small moon of Ida. Since that time, and particularly in the      modern observations, but none have been confirmed as
last year, the number of known binaries has risen dramati-         separated binaries, although Ostro et al. (2000a), Merline
cally. In the mid to late 1990s, the lightcurves of several        et al. (2000b), and Tanga et al. (2001) have shown (216)
near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) revealed a high likelihood of          Kleopatra to be a contact binary. In the same decade, radar
being binary. Previously odd-shaped and lobate NEAs, ob-           emerged as a technique capable of enabling study of a small
served by radar, have given way to signatures revealing that       number of (generally nearby) asteroids. In addition, speckle
at least six NEAs are binary systems. These lightcurve and         interferometry was used to search for close-in binaries, and
radar observations indicate that among the NEAs, the binary        the advent of CCD technology allowed for more sensitive
frequency may be ~16% (see sections 2.4 and 2.5).                  and detailed searches. Studies by Gehrels et al. (1987), who
    Among the main-belt asteroids, we now know of eight            searched 11 main-belt asteroids using direct CCD imaging
confirmed binary systems, although the overall frequency of        and by Gradie and Flynn (1988), who searched 17 main-
these systems is likely to be low, perhaps a few percent (see      belt asteroids, using a CCD/coronagraphic technique, did
section 2.2.6). These detections have come about largely           not produce any detections. By the end of the decade, pre-
because of significant advances in adaptive-optics systems         vious optimism about the prevalence of satellites had re-
on large telescopes, which can now reduce the blurring of          treated to claims ranging from their being essentially non-
the Earth’s atmosphere to compete with the spatial resolu-         existent (Gehrels et al., 1987) to their being rare (Weiden-
tion of space-based imaging [which is also, via the Hubble         schilling et al., 1989). Weidenschilling et al. (1989) give a
Space Telescope (HST), now contributing valuable observa-          summary of the status of the observations and theory at the
tions]. Searches among the Trojans and transneptunian ob-          time of Asteroids II.
jects (TNOs) have shown that other dynamical populations               The tide turned in 1993, when the Galileo spacecraft,
also harbor binaries.                                              en route to its orbital tour of the Jupiter system, flew past
    With new reliable techniques for detection, the scientific     (243) Ida and serendipitously imaged a small (1.4-km-di-
community has been rewarded with many examples of sys-             ameter Dactyl) moon orbiting this 31-km-diameter, S-type
tems for study. This has in turn spurred new theoretical think-    asteroid. This discovery spurred new observations and theo-
ing and numerical simulations, techniques for which have           retical thinking on the formation and prevalence of asteroid
also improved substantially in recent years.                       satellites. Roberts et al. (1995) performed a search of 57
                                                                   asteroids, over multiple observing sessions, using speckle
1.2. History and Inventory of Binary Asteroids                     interferometry. No companions were found in this survey.
                                                                   A search by Storrs et al. (1999a) of 10 asteroids using HST
    Searches for satellites can be traced back to William          also revealed no binaries. Numerical simulations performed
Herschel in 1802, soon after the discovery of the first as-        by Durda (1996) and Doressoundiram et al. (1997) showed
teroid, (1) Ceres. The first suspicion of an asteroidal satel-     that the formation of small satellites may be a fairly com-
lite goes back to Andre (1901), who speculated that the β-         mon outcome of catastrophic collisions. Bottke and Melosh
Lyrae-like lightcurve of Eros could result from an eclipsing       (1996a,b) suggest that a sizable fraction (~15%) of Earth-
binary system. Of course, we now know definitively that            crossing asteroids may have satellites, based on their simu-
this interpretation is wrong (Merline et al., 2001c), Eros being   lations and the occurrence of doublet craters on Earth and
one of the few asteroids visited directly by spacecraft (cf.       Venus. Various theoretical studies have been performed on
Cheng, 2002).                                                      the dynamics and stability of orbits about irregularly shaped
    The late 1970s saw a flurry of reports of asteroid satel-      asteroids (Chauvineau and Mignard, 1990; Hamilton and
lites, inferred from indirect evidence, such as anomalous          Burns, 1991; Chauvineau et al., 1993; Scheeres, 1994).
lightcurves or spurious secondary blinkouts during occul-              After the first imaging of an asteroid moon by Galileo,
tations of stars by asteroids. Van Flandern et al. (1979) in       several reports of binaries among the NEA population,
Asteroids give a complete summary of the evidence at that          based on lightcurve shapes, were made by Pravec et al. and
time. To some, the evidence was highly suggestive that sat-        Mottola et al., including 1994 AW1 (Pravec and Hahn, 1997),
ellites were common. To date, however, none of those sus-          1991 VH (Pravec et al., 1998a), 3671 Dionysus (Mottola
                                                                                Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites   291

et al., 1997), and 1996 FG3 (Pravec et al., 1998b). While         resolve differences in brightness of many magnitudes. The
these systems are likely to be real, they have not been con-      basic observational problem, detection of a faint object in
firmed by direct imaging or radar techniques.                     close proximity to a much brighter one, is common to many
    It was not until 1998 that the first definitive and verifi-   areas of astronomy, such as binary and multiple star sys-
able evidence for an asteroid satellite was acquired from         tems or circumstellar and protostellar disks.
Earth, when 215-km (45) Eugenia was found to have a                   At the inner limit, the smallest separations between the
small moon (13-km Petit Prince) by direct imaging assisted        primary asteroid and the companion are determined by or-
by adaptive optics (AO) (Merline et al., 1999b,c). This dis-      bital instabilities (a few radii of the primary); at the far ex-
covery was the first result from a dedicated survey with the      treme, they are determined by the Hill stability limit (a few
capability to search for faint companions (∆m ~ 7 mag) as         hundred radii of the primary for the main belt). For a 50-
close as a few tenths of an arcsecond from the primary. This      km-diameter main-belt asteroid (say at 2.5 AU), observed
survey detected two more asteroid binaries in 2000: (762)         at opposition, the angular separation at which we might find
Pulcova (Merline et al., 2000a) and (90) Antiope (Merline         a satellite spans the range of ~0.05 arcsec to several arcsec.
et al., 2000a,b). While the moon of Pulcova is small, Anti-       If the satellite has a diameter of 2 km, the brightness differ-
ope is truly a double asteroid, with components of nearly         ence is 7 mag. Using conventional telescopes, the overlap-
the same size.                                                    ping point-spread functions of these objects of widely dis-
    After these detections, the first two NEA binaries to be      parate brightness make satellite detection in the near field
definitively detected by radar were announced: 2000 DP107         extraordinarily challenging. The FWHM of the uncorrected
(Ostro et al., 2000b; Margot et al., 2000) and 2000 UG11          point spread function of a large groundbased telescope,
(Nolan et al., 2000). In the meantime, Pravec and colleagues      under average seeing conditions of 1 arcsec, corresponds to
have continued to add to the rapidly growing list of sus-         nearly 25 primary radii in the above example. Indeed, both
pected binary NEAs from lightcurves.                              theory and most examples of observed binaries suggest that
    Starting in 2001, the discovery of binary discoveries         moons are more likely to be found closer to the primary.
really surged. In February, Brown and Margot (2001), also             The traditional detection techniques have been deep im-
using adaptive-optics technology, discovered a moon of            aging using multiple short exposures to search the nearfield
(87) Sylvia, a Cybele asteroid beyond the main belt. Soon         and the use of “coronagraphic” cameras for the farfield.
afterward, Storrs et al. (2001a) reported a moon of (107)         With modern, low-noise, high-dynamic-range detectors and
Camilla, also a Cybele, using HST observations. Four addi-        with the advent of adaptive-optics technology, a ground-
tional radar binaries were announced: 1999 KW4 (Benner            based search for and study of, asteroid satellites has been
et al., 2001a), 1998 ST27 (Benner et al., 2001b), 2002 BM26       realized.
(Nolan et al., 2002a), and 2002 KK8 (Nolan et al., 2002b).            Radar is a powerful technique for nearby objects because
In addition, Veillet et al. (2001, 2002) reported the first       the return signal is proportional to the inverse 4th power
binary among transneptunian objects (aside from Pluto/            of the distance. This has limited study to either very large
Charon), 1998 WW31, obtained by direct CCD imaging                asteroids at the inner edge of the main belt or to NEAs.
without AO. Six more TNO doubles were reported: 2001              Radar has shown tremendous promise and upgrades to the
QT297 (Eliot et al., 2001); 2001 QW322 (Kavelaars et al.,         telescopes and electronics have enhanced the range and ca-
2001); 1999 TC36 (Trujillo and Brown, 2002); 1998 SM165           pabilities. Observations of NEAs, however, have drawbacks
(Brown and Trujillo, 2002); 1997 CQ29 (Noll et al., 2002a);       because the objects are small and opportunities to observe
and 2000 CF105 (Noll et al., 2002b). A small moon was dis-        them may be spaced many years apart. Therefore, it is dif-
covered around (22) Kalliope by Margot and Brown (2001)           ficult to make repeat or different observations.
and Merline et al. (2001a); this was the first M-type aster-          Lightcurve observations generally require the observed
oid known to have a companion. Later, the first binary Tro-       system to be nonsynchronous, i.e., having a primary rota-
jan asteroid, (617) Patroclus, was found (Merline et al.,         tion rate different from the orbital rate. In addition, either
2001b); this asteroid, like Antiope, has components of            the system must be eclipsing or the secondary must have
nearly equal size. Merline et al. (2002) then detected a          an elongated shape. Such a system will show a two-com-
widely spaced binary in the main belt, (3749) Balam, which        ponent lightcurve. To be well resolved, both contributions
appears to be the most loosely bound system known. (The           should have an amplitude of at least a few hundredths of a
list of asteroid satellites in this chapter is complete as of     magnitude. The requirements generally restrict efficient
August 2002.)                                                     observations to close-in binary systems with the secondary’s
                                                                  diameter at least approximately one-fifth that of the primary.
1.3. Observational Challenges                                     This technique works best also on NEAs, where these small
                                                                  binaries appear to have a long tidal evolution timescale and
   Direct imaging of possible satellites of asteroids has been    therefore can remain nonsynchronous for a long time after
hampered by the lack of adequate angular resolution to            formation. These close binaries also lend themselves to
distinguish objects separated by fractions of an arcsecond        having a high probability of eclipse at any given time. This
and by the lack of sufficient dynamic range of detectors to       technique suffers from the same problems with NEAs men-
292       Asteroids III

tioned above: Relatively quick repeat observations over a
wide range of viewing geometries are not possible. Thus,
in many cases there may be ambiguities in interpretation of
the lightcurve signatures.
   Direct imaging has been shown to be possible for TNOs
because those detected so far have wide separations and
large secondary/primary size ratios. So although these ob-
jects are far away (~45 AU), loosely bound binaries can be
separated with conventional (non-AO) imaging under ideal
conditions. HST searches for main-belt binaries have been
largely unsuccessful, not because of limitations to instru-
mentation, but because of the lack of telescope time allo-       Fig. 1. Discovery image for Dactyl, the first known asteroid sat-
cated. HST searches for TNO binaries are now under way           ellite (Belton et al., 1996). It was taken by Galileo on August 29,
and are showing promising results.                               1993, from a range of 10,719 km. The picture has a resolution of
                                                                 ~100 m/pixel. Because of limited downlink, not all images could
        2. OBSERVATIONAL TECHNIQUES                              be returned. Instead, this technique of playing back image strips
                                                                 was used to find the relevant images or portions of images that
              AND DISCOVERIES
                                                                 contained Ida. The resulting “jailbar” image here fortuitously pro-
                                                                 vides the first clue of an extended object, with the expected pho-
2.1. Searches During Spacecraft Encounters                       tometric profile, off the bright limb of Ida.

    One of the most effective ways of performing a search
for satellites of asteroids is by a flyby or orbital tour with
a spacecraft, although this is prohibitively expensive for       as shown in Fig. 1. The presence of the moon was later
more than a few objects. Nonetheless, this method produced       confirmed by the infrared spectrometer experiment and was
the first definitive evidence for the existence of asteroid      announced by Belton and Carlson (1994). It was initially
moons. It also allows searches to much smaller sizes than        dubbed 1993(243)1, as the first satellite of asteroid (243)
is possible from Earth.                                          to be discovered in 1993, and was later given the permanent
    A variety of problems are encountered when searching         name Dactyl, after the Dactyli, the children or protectors
for satellites in images taken during spacecraft encounters.     of Ida.
A major problem is that the images are taken from a rap-             During the flyby of Ida, 47 images of Dactyl were ob-
idly moving platform. This makes quick visual inspection         tained (Chapman et al., 1995; Belton et al., 1995, 1996).
difficult, because one must project the image to a common        However, because there was no opportunity for feedback
reference point. If the moon is resolved, as in the case of      to guide an imaging sequence, these pictures were all ser-
Dactyl, the problem is more manageable. But it is possible       endipitous. The spacecraft trajectory was nearly in the plane
that moons would appear as small, pointlike objects, com-        of the satellite motion, and hence little relative motion was
peting for recognition with stars, cosmic-ray hits, and de-      observed, resulting in poorly determined orbital parameters.
tector defects. The strategy is normally to take a series of     Followup observations with HST (Belton et al., 1995, 1996)
many pictures, in which the detector defects are known and       failed to find the satellite, which was not surprising given
the cosmic rays may be eliminated through lack of persis-        its separation. But if the object were on a hyperbolic or
tence. Stars may be eliminated by identification using star      highly elliptical orbit, there would be some chance of find-
catalogs or by common motion. Even with these techniques,        ing it with HST. These additional observations did allow
however, cosmic-ray hits in a series of images may conspire      limits to be set on the density of Ida.
to cluster in a pattern consistent with the spacecraft motion        Additionally, resolved pictures of Dactyl’s surface have
and an object in a plausible position in three-dimensional       allowed for geological interpretation and have provided a
space relative to the asteroid. Correlations among all iden-     glimpse into the possible origin and history of an asteroid
tified point-source candidates on a series of images must        moon. The pair is shown in Fig. 2, with a smaller-scale im-
be examined.                                                     age of Dactyl in Fig. 3. Chapman et al. (1996) and Veverka
    2.1.1. Discovery of Dactyl. The first image of an aster-     et al. (1996b) indicate that the crater size-frequency distri-
oid moon was spotted by Ann Harch of the Galileo Imaging         bution on both Ida and Dactyl exhibit equilibrium satura-
Team on February 17, 1994, during playback of images from        tion (see also Chapman, 2002). Thus, we can estimate only
Galileo’s encounter with S-type (243) Ida on August 29,          the minimum ages for both objects; the relative age of the
1993. Because of the loss early in the mission of Galileo’s      two, from crater data alone, is uncertain. Given the observed
high-gain antenna, some data from the Ida encounter were         impactor size-distribution, saturation at the largest craters on
returned months afterward. The first images were returned        Ida, ~10 km, would be expected after about 2 b.y. (Chap-
as “jailbars,” or thin strips of a few lines of data separated   man et al., 1996), setting roughly the minimum age of Ida.
by gaps. This technique allowed a quick look at the contents     The largest craters on Dactyl, however, are less than 0.4 km
of the images to determine which lines contained Ida data.       in size, and would saturate in about 30 m.y. Impacts that
Fortuitously, one of these lines passed through the satellite,   would create larger craters on Dactyl would instead break
                                                                                      Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites   293

                                                                         its initial formation, because it is unlikely to have formed
                                                                         only in the last 30 m.y. Additional geological data support
                                                                         the idea of this satellite as a reaccumulated rubble pile. It
                                                                         is roughly spherical, with no obvious evidence of coherent
                                                                         monolithic structure. It displays a softened appearance and
                                                                         likely has a surface regolith (Veverka et al., 1996b).
                                                                             The spectrum of Dactyl (from Galileo imager data, 0.4–
                                                                         1.0 µm) is similar to that of Ida (Veverka et al., 1996a), but
                                                                         with some important differences. Both objects show S-type
                                                                         spectra and have similar albedos. Dactyl, however, shows
                                                                         somewhat less reddening than Ida, possibly indicating less
                                                                         space weathering, which is also consistent with a younger
                                                                         surface age, as expected from the most recent disruption/
                                                                         reaccretion episode (Chapman, 1996).
Fig. 2. Full image of Ida and Dactyl, taken from approximately               2.1.2. Other searches. Extensive searches were made
the same range and with the same resolution listed in Fig. 1. The        for additional satellites of Ida in the Galileo datasets; no
picture is in a green filter. Ida is ~56 km long and Dactyl is roughly   candidates were found that were not consistent with single
spherical with a diameter of ~1.4 km. At this time Dactyl is in the      or multiple cosmic-ray events (Belton et al., 1995, 1996).
foreground, ~85 km (5.5 RIda) from Ida’s center, and moving at           The searches were made at spacecraft-to-asteroid ranges of
about 6 m s–1. The orbit is prograde with respect to Ida’s spin,
                                                                         200,000 km (satellite-detection size limit ~800 m), 10,000 km
which itself is retrograde with respect to the ecliptic.
                                                                         (size limit ~50 m), and 2400 km (encounter; size limit ~10 m).
                                                                             Cursory searches for satellites were made during the
                                                                         Galileo flyby of S-type (951) Gaspra in 1991, with no de-
up the object. The mean time between impacts that would                  tections of objects larger than 27 m out to ~10 Gaspra radii
destroy Dactyl is estimated by Davis et al. (1996) to be,                (Belton et al., 1992).
depending on model assumptions, between about 3 m.y. and                     The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft made a fast flyby of
240 m.y., the same order as the saturation cratering age. If             C-type, inner main-belt asteroid (253) Mathilde in 1997
Dactyl was formed 2 b.y. ago with Ida, via disruptive cap-               en route to its orbital encounter with (433) Eros. A well-
ture (section 3.3), perhaps during the Koronis-family break-             planned imaging sequence to search for satellites was per-
up (Binzel, 1988), then it is very unlikely that it would still          formed and a thorough search made (Merline et al., 1998;
exist intact, given its short lifetime against collisional break-        Veverka et al., 1999a). More than 200 images were taken
up. Conceivably, it may have formed from the ejecta of a                 specifically to search for satellites. No unambiguous evi-
more recent, large cratering event (section 3.2). Either way, it         dence for satellites larger than 40 m diameter was found
must have been disrupted and reaccreted several times since              within the searchable volume, which was estimated to be
                                                                         ~4% of the Hill sphere. The portion, however, of the Hill
                                                                         sphere searched was an important one, inside roughly 20
                                                                         radii of Mathilde (almost all of the known main-belt bina-
                                                                         ries show separations well below 20 primary radii). From
                                                                         approach images, which were less sensitive due to lighting
                                                                         geometry, no satellites larger than 10 km were found in the
                                                                         entire Hill sphere.
                                                                             The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft continued on to an
                                                                         unplanned flyby of (433) Eros, an S-type NEA, in Decem-
                                                                         ber 1998 (cf. Cheng, 2002). The first critical burn of the
                                                                         main rocket for the rendezvous aborted prematurely, which
                                                                         led to execution of a contingency imaging sequence. This
                                                                         included a search for satellites down about 50 m in the
                                                                         entire Hill sphere (Merline et al., 1999a; Veverka et al.,
                                                                         1999b). About one year later, after engineers had diagnosed
                                                                         the problem and brought the spacecraft slowly back to Eros,
                                                                         the orbital tour of Eros began. During approach to orbit
                                                                         insertion, another, more detailed and thorough search for
                                                                         satellites was made. During this search, both manual and
                                                                         automated searches were performed (Merline et al., 2001c;
                                                                         Veverka et al., 2000). This was the first systematic search
Fig. 3. Highest-resolution picture of Dactyl, at 39 m/pixel, show-       for satellites of the entire Hill sphere of an asteroid down
ing shape and surface geology. The topography is dominated by            to small sizes. The search found no objects at diameter 20 m
impact craters, without prominent grooves or ridges.                     (95% confidence) and none at 10 m (with 70% confidence).
294       Asteroids III

2.2. Adaptive Optics on Large                                      Telescope (CFHT), the Keck, the ESO/Adonis, the Lick, the
Groundbased Telescopes                                             Palomar, and the Gemini North. Only three of these sys-
                                                                   tems, all located on Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i, have resulted in
    Given the observational challenges just discussed and the      discoveries of asteroid satellites. The 3.6-m CFHT uses a
number of failed attempts to detect asteroid satellites, it was    19-element CS system called PUEO (Roddier et al., 1991;
clear that a new approach was needed. In 1996, Merline and         Rigaut et al., 1998). It can reach a limiting magnitude of
collaborators began to apply a relatively new technology           about V = 14.5 with a resolution of about 0.11 arcsec at
in hopes of achieving high-contrast, high-spatial-resolution       H-band. The 10-m Keck uses a 349-element SH system
imaging on a large number of targets from groundbased              (Wizinowich et al., 2000), allowing compensation to about
telescopes. This new technique, called adaptive optics (AO),       V = 13 with a resolution of 0.04 arcsec at H-band. The
ultimately led to the first Earth-based images of satellites.      8.1-m Gemini telescope, with the Hokupa‘a 36-element CS
    2.2.1. Method and capabilities. This technique mini-           system (Graves et al., 1998) of the University of Hawai‘i,
mizes the distortion in an astronomical image by sensing           can reach about V = 17.5, with resolution of ~0.05 arcsec
and correcting, in real time, aberrations due to the Earth’s       at H-band.
atmosphere, usually by means of a deformable mirror. This              The AO systems must have a reference point source to
new technology can result in diffraction-limited imaging           compute atmospheric turbulence. The systems may either
with the largest groundbased telescopes. Compared with             use a natural guide star (NGS) or an artificially generated
conventional direct-imaging techniques, this technique             star (LGS), in which a laser is used to produce a point
shows a dramatic improvement in the ability to detect as-          source in the upper atmosphere. Laser-guide systems have
teroid companions. Adaptive optics (1) decreases the light         been tested and used largely within military applications.
contribution from the primary asteroid at the position of the      Although there are plans for LGS systems at many astro-
satellite on the plane of the sky and (2) increases the signal     nomical facilities, the progress has been slow and of lim-
from the secondary asteroid at that position, enhancing the        ited use thus far. Therefore, NGS systems dominate AO
ability to detect, or set limits on the sizes of, satellites. In   systems. For astronomical (fixed-source) applications, a
addition, because IR-imaging cameras are used, no charge           nearby brighter star may be used, provided it is within the
bleeding (as for CCDs) occurs in an overexposure of the pri-       isoplanatic patch, which may be about 20 arcsec at 2 µm.
mary. This effectively gives near-field coronagraphic imag-        But for planetary objects, e.g., main-belt asteroids, their fast
ing capability, allowing deep exposures for faint companions.      motion prohibits use of nearby objects, and one must rely
    In adaptive-optics systems, the light from the telescope is    on the object itself as the reference. This presents two limi-
processed by a separate optical unit that resides beyond the       tations: Extended objects will tend to degrade the quality
telescope focal plane. A recollimated beam impinges on a           of the compensation, although asteroids are not extended
deformable mirror (DM), which has many actuators that can          enough to be of concern. In addition, the quality of the AO
be adjusted rapidly to “correct” the beam back to its undis-       correction will depend on the brightness of the reference
torted “shape.” Light from the DM is then divided, with part       object, so there is a limit to how faint an asteroid can be
(typically near-IR) of it going to the science camera, and         observed.
part (typically visible) going to a wavefront sensor, which            Most of the AO systems operate in the near IR, using
analyzes the deformation of the wavefront and provides cor-        HgCdTe IR (1–2.5 µm) array detectors as the science cam-
rection signals to the DM, forming a closed loop.                  era. Although the ultimate signal-to-noise of the science
    Two types of systems are in use. One uses a Shack-             data is a function of the brightness in the selected IR band,
Hartmann (SH) wavefront sensor, basically an x-y array of          it is the visible light that is used by the wavefront sensor,
many lenslets in a collimated beam. Each of these lenslets         so the quality of the AO compensation is dependent upon
allows sensing of the beam deviation in a different part of        the V magnitude.
the pupil. The other method is curvature-wavefront sens-               The correct wavelength band for observations is adjusted
ing (CS) (Roddier, 1988) in which the wavefront sensor is          depending on conditions and the telescope. With IR AO ob-
divided in a radial/sectoral fashion. The illumination pat-        servations, there is always a tradeoff between competing ef-
tern of the beam is then sampled rapidly at positions on           fects — the shorter the wavelength, the narrower the PSF
either side of a focal plane; the differences in illumination      for a given telescope. But at shorter wavelengths, the num-
are related to the local wavefront curvature. While the            ber of cells in the telescope beam that need to be continu-
Shack-Hartmann systems are more common, the curvature              ously corrected grows beyond the capacity of the AO sys-
systems can work with fewer elements, at faster speeds, and        tem — more cells require more AO actuators for compen-
on fainter objects. CS systems trade the higher-order cor-         sation. But systems with a large number of actuators means
rections of an SH system for faster (kHz) sample and cor-          prohibitively high cost, so there is a limit. Of course, the
rection speeds.                                                    larger the telescope, the larger the number of cells needed
    There are many AO systems either in use or under de-           to compensate. Therefore, the 10-m Keck usually performs
velopment. Among those that have been used for planetary           best at K'-band (2.1 µm) and the 3.6-m CFHT at H-band
applications are systems at the Starfire Optical Range (U.S.       (1.6 µm). Thus, the Strehl ratio (the ratio of peak brightness
Air Force), the Mt. Wilson 100", the University of Hawai‘i         of acquired image to the peak brightness of a perfectly dif-
(on 88", UKIRT, and CFHT), the Canada-France-Hawai‘i               fraction-limited point source) increases at longer wave-
                                                                              Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites   295

lengths, while the instrumental width also increases. Un-
der good conditions one hopes to achieve about 50%
Strehl. On exceptionally good nights, it may be possible to
use J-band (1.2 µm) for a narrower PSF.
   The future holds great promise for AO, as more tele-
scopes adopt this technology. In addition, the advent of
quality LGS systems and the opportunity for systems em-
ploying many more actuators, as costs decline and computer
speeds increase, means the possibility of visible-light sys-
tems and a correspondingly narrower diffraction limit.
   Using AO, because the result is a picture of the system
on the plane of the sky, we can hope to achieve the same
information (and more) about a system as that which can
be obtained from visual binary stars, only on a substantially
shorter timescale. Basically, all seven dynamic orbital ele-
ments required to describe the motion are derivable. These
are the elements describing motion along the orbital el-
lipse — the semimajor axis, the eccentricity, and an indi-
cation of orbital phase, such as time of periapse passage or
true anomaly — plus the elements describing the orienta-
tion in three-dimensional space — e.g., the inclination, the
longitude of the ascending node, and the argument of            Fig. 4. Discovery image of Petit Prince, moon of (45) Eugenia,
periapse. In addition, because the system mass is unknown       taken at the Canada-France-Hawai‘i Telescope on November 1,
(unlike Sun-orbiting objects) we also require determination     1998, using the PUEO adaptive-optics system (Merline et al.,
of the orbital period. From a limited span of observations,     1999b). It is the first asteroid moon to be imaged from Earth. The
say a single orbit or series of a few orbits, there remains a   image is an average of 16 images of exposure 15 s. It is taken in
                                                                H-band (1.65 µm) and has a plate scale of 0.035 arcsec/pixel. The
two-fold ambiguity in the orbital pole position (determina-
                                                                separation of the moon is ~0.75 arcsec from Eugenia and has a
tion of the pole direction is equivalent to determination of    brightness ratio of ~7 mag.
the two elements inclination and node). This can be resolved
by observing at a different viewing geometry at some later
time. The period and orbit size (assuming a circular orbit)     name Petit Prince in honor of the prince imperial of France,
are readily obtainable, which immediately yields an esti-       the only child of Napoleon III and his wife Empress Eu-
mate of the system (primary + secondary) mass, by Kepler’s      genie (namesake of Eugenia). (The name itself is derived
Third Law. If the secondary is small or if we can indepen-      from the popular children’s book Le Petit Prince by A.
dently determine the size ratio (and then make an assump-       Saint-Exupery, whose central character was an asteroid-
tion that the primary and secondary are of the same density),   dwelling Little Prince.) The intention was to keep and so-
then the primary mass can be estimated. If the primary          lidify the tradition of naming asteroid moons after the
asteroid size is known, then we can determine the primary’s     children or other derivative of the parent asteroid. Figure 5
density. Of course, density is clearly one of the most fun-     shows five epochs of the orbit at the time of discovery. Fig-
damental parameters one hopes to know about any body,           ure 6 exhibits the tremendous power of modern AO tech-
and gives direct insight into the composition and structure.    niques both to resolve the asteroid and to clearly separate
Because most of the orbits are small in angular terms (and      a close companion.
pixels on a detector), the errors in measurement of posi-           The satellite appears to be roughly in the asteroid’s equa-
tions translate into sizable uncertainties in most of the or-   torial plane and in a prograde orbit (Merline et al., 1999c).
bital elements. However, the period can be very accurately      A prograde orbit is preferred for a satellite formed from
determined, and the ultimate uncertainties in density are       impact-generated orbital debris (Weidenschilling et al.,
dominated by uncertainties in the size of the asteroid.         1989; Durda and Geissler, 1996). A retrograde orbit, how-
   2.2.2. (45) Eugenia. The first binary system discovery       ever, is more stable against perturbing effects of the nonuni-
using AO was accomplished on November 1, 1998, when             form gravitational field of an oblate primary (Chauvineau
a small companion of (45) Eugenia was discovered at the         et al., 1993; Scheeres, 1994). An orbit with an opposite
CFHT by Merline et al. (1999b,c). The system was tracked        sense to the asteroid’s orbital motion around the Sun (as it
for 10 d and again occasionally in the following months and     is for Petit Prince — Eugenia’s spin is retrograde) is more
years. It was the first AO system for which the two-fold de-    stable against the effects of solar tides (Hamilton and Burns,
generacy in the orbit pole had been resolved. Further, be-      1991). Mechanisms for capture of such ejecta into quasi-
cause of the large brightness difference (about 7 mag), it      stable orbits are reviewed by Scheeres et al. (2002).
remains one of the more difficult AO binaries to observe.           The orbital period was determined to be ~4.7 d for the
Figure 4 shows the discovery image of this object, provi-       satellite of this FC-type asteroid and yields a density esti-
sionally named S/1998 (45) 1 and later given the permanent      mate of ~1.2 g cm–3 (Merline et al., 1999c). This result fol-
296        Asteroids III

                                                                        lowed soon after the surprising announcement that the den-
                                                                        sity to C-type Mathilde was only 1.3 g cm–3, as determined
                                                                        by spacecraft flyby (Veverka et al., 1999a). Such a density
                                                                        requires a significant amount of macroporosity to be consis-
                                                                        tent with the expected meteorite analog for these objects,
                                                                        namely carbonaceous chondrites (Britt and Consolmagno,
                                                                        2000). Therefore, it is possible that these asteroids are
                                                                        loosely packed rubble piles.
                                                                            2.2.3. (90) Antiope and (617) Patroclus. The first true
                                                                        double asteroid, (90) Antiope, was discovered in August
                                                                        2000 by Merline et al. (2000a). This main-belt C-type was
                                                                        found to have two nearly equal-sized components of diam-
                                                                        eter ~85 km, rather than a single object of size 120 km as
                                                                        previously assumed. The orbital period of the pair was
                                                                        found to be ~16.5 h, consistent with the previously observed
                                                                        lightcurve period. Interestingly enough, a lightcurve by
                                                                        Hansen et al. (1997) shows a classic eclipsing-binary shape
                                                                        (although they did not make this interpretation), which
                                                                        would be expected to result from equal-sized components,
                                                                        with the orbit viewed edge-on. The derived density for the
Fig. 5. This infrared image is a composite of five epochs of            components of Antiope, assuming they are of the same size
Eugenia’s moon. The moon has a period of 4.7 d, with a nearly           and density, is about 1.3 g cm–3, again similar to previous
circular orbit of ~1190 km (0.77 arcsec). The orbit is tilted ~46°      measurements of low-albedo asteroids. Figure 7 shows the
with respect to our line-of-sight. The normal two-fold degeneracy       components of Antiope as they orbit the common center of
in pole position (i.e., true sense of the moon’s orbit) was resolved    mass. Another double, (617) Patroclus, was discovered in
by observing the system later, when positional differences between
                                                                        September 2001 by Merline et al. (2001b). Again, it is a
the two solutions became apparent. Eugenia is ~215 km in diam-
                                                                        primitive P-type and is the first Trojan to be shown defini-
eter and the moon’s diameter is ~13 km. The large “cross” is a
common artifact of diffraction from the secondary-mirror support        tively to be binary. Few data were acquired, but it appears
structure. The images are deconvolved, and the brightness of            that this object also will show a low density.
Eugenia has been suppressed to enhance sharpness and clarity.               2.2.4. (762) Pulcova, (87) Sylvia, and (22) Kalliope.
                                                                        Small satellites were also found around two more large,
                                                                        low-albedo asteroids: F-type (762) Pulcova (Merline et
                                                                        al., 2000b) at CFHT and P-type (87) Sylvia (Brown and
                       45 Eugenia and moon, Petit Prince.               Margot, 2001) at Keck. Sylvia, a Cybele, is the first binary
                       Keck H-band AO.                                  found in the outer main belt. In August/September 2001, a
                                                                        small companion to (22) Kalliope was discovered by Margot
                                                                        and Brown (2001) and Merline et al. (2001a). This is the
                                                                        first M-type asteroid known to have a companion and gives
                                                                        the hope of getting a reliable density estimate for these con-
                                                                        troversial objects, which have traditionally been thought to
                                                                        be metallic. Initial estimates put the density near ~2.3 g cm–3.
                                                                        This value is even lower, although not significantly, than the
                                                                        values previously derived for S-types (around 2.5 g cm–3).
                                                                        If so, it clearly indicates that at least Kalliope is not of a

Fig. 6. This deconvolved Keck image in February 2000 shows
Petit Prince (Merline et al., 1999c) and a resolved image of the
disk of Eugenia (after Close et al., 2000). The pair is well sepa-
rated enough to get accurate colors or spectra. The unusual elon-
gation of Eugenia’s shape was inferred previously from lightcurve
amplitudes. Because the lack of detailed fidelity in flux preserva-
tion under deconvolution, the brightness variations across the disk     Fig. 7. Double asteroid (90) Antiope as it rotates with a 16.5-h
are not real. The brightness of the satellite (which is not resolved)   period, soon after its discovery at Keck in August 2000 (Merline
has been scaled to appear to have roughly the same “surface             et al., 2000a,b). Once thought to be an object ~125 km across,
brightness” as the primary. The flux ratio of the two objects is        the C-type asteroid Antiope actually has two components, each
about 285.                                                              ~85 km in diameter. The separation is ~170 km.
                                                                                    Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites      297

solid metallic composition. It would also be difficult to           tens of kilometers in diameter). The overall frequency, in-
imagine an extremely porous rubble pile of metallic com-            cluding small, close-in moons such as Dactyl (currently
position, because it would imply a macroporosity of more            unobservable from Earth), will undoubtedly rise, but it is
than about 60%. We may be faced with the difficult task of          unknown by how much. Very small satellites will have a
explaining how bodies with metallic spectra and radar               limited lifetime against collisions, although it is possible
reflectivities have rocklike densities.                             they may reaccrete. The single known binary among the
   2.2.5. (3749) Balam. Among the main-belt binaries,               Trojans, from a sample of about six, hints that the binary
this object stands out as an oddity. Discovered at Gemini           frequency may be higher in that population, although it is
Observatory in 2002 (Merline et al., 2002), this binary is          noted that the collision speeds are comparable to the main
the most loosely bound system known, even more so than              belt and the collision frequencies are only higher by about
the TNO binaries. The secondary appears to orbit at least           a factor of 2 (Davis et al., 2002).
100 (primary) radii from the primary, which itself is rather            For those satellites that are found, it would be useful to
small (about 7 km in diameter). This is probably the first          establish any systematics that may provide clues as to the
system known that was formed by “disruptive capture,”               origin mechanism for the moons. For example, it has been
discussed in section 3.3. Early models of Durda (1996) and          suggested that either slow (from tidal spindown due to a
Doressoundiram et al. (1997), as well as the more sophis-           satellite) or fast (from a glancing collision, which might
ticated models currently being performed by Durda et al.,           form satellites) rotation might be correlated with the pres-
indicate that such systems (small primaries, with a widely          ence of satellites. Family members have been suggested as
separated secondary) are commonly formed in catastrophic            likely candidates for satellites, because coorbiting pairs may
collisions and that a large number of should be found in            have been created in the family-forming event. The likeli-
the main belt.                                                      hood of moons may even be linked to the taxonomic type or
   2.2.6. Systematics. While there appears to be a rash of          shape of the asteroid.
newly discovered binaries, it turns out that the prevalence             Most of the observed binaries in the main belt, outer belt,
of (large) main-belt moons is likely to be low, probably            or Trojan region are of primitive type (C, F, P). Are sat-
~2% (Merline et al., 2001d). The largest survey to date, by         ellites truly more prevalent around these objects, or is there
Merline et al., has sampled more than 300 main-belt aster-          some observational selection effect? Clearly, those aster-
oids, with five examples of relatively large satellites (few        oids highest in priority for observation are the apparently

                    TABLE 1.     Binary asteroids discovered by adaptive optics or direct imaging techniques.

                              Taxonomic                                 Primary
                             Classification              Asteroid       Rotation           Primary             Discovery
Object              Type       (Tholen)       Family     a (AU)        Period (h)       Diameter (km)            Date              Method
(243) Ida           MB             S          Koronis      2.86          4.63                 31            Aug. 29, 1993           SC
(45) Eugenia        MB            FC          Eugenia      2.72          5.70                 215           Nov. 1, 1998            AO
(762) Pulcova       MB             F                       3.16          5.84                 137           Feb. 22, 2000           AO
(90) Antiope        MB            C           Themis       3.16         16.50*              85 + 85         Aug. 10, 2000           AO
(87) Sylvia         OB             P                       3.49          5.18                 261           Feb. 18, 2001           AO
(107) Camilla       OB             C                       3.48          4.84                 223           Mar. 1, 2001            HST
(22) Kalliope       MB            M                        2.91          4.15                 181           Aug. 29, 2001           AO
(3749) Balam        MB             S           Flora       2.24                                7             Feb. 8, 2002           AO

(617) Patroclus   L5-TROJ          P                       5.23                            95 + 105          Sep. 22, 2001          AO

1998   WW31         TNO                                   44.95                              150†            Dec. 22, 2000           DI
2001   QT297        TNO                                   44.80                              580‡            Oct. 11, 2001           DI
2001   QW322        TNO                                   44.22                              200§            Aug. 24, 2001           DI
1999   TC36         TNO                                   39.53                              740‡            Dec. 8, 2001           HST
1998   SM165        TNO                                   47.82           7.98               450‡            Dec. 22, 2001          HST
1997   CQ29         TNO                                   45.34                              300‡            Nov. 17, 2001          HST
2000   CF105        TNO                                   44.20                              170‡            Jan. 12, 2002          HST
*Assuming synchronous rotation.
† Assuming, for both components, albedo ~5.4% and density ~1 g cm–3 (Veillet et al., 2002).
‡ Values provided by A. W. Harris (personal communication, 2002), assuming albedo 4%.
§ Assuming albedo 4% (Kavelaars et al., 2001).

MB = main belt; OB = outer belt; TROJ = Jupiter Trojan; TNO = transneptunian object; SC = spacecraft encounter; AO = adaptive
optics; HST = HST direct imaging; DI = direct groundbased imaging.
298       Asteroids III

                              TABLE 2.      Properties of secondaries and derived properties of primaries.

                                                                           Moon          Size         Primary      Primary          Mass
                      Orbit      Orbit          Orbit        Orbit        Diameter       Ratio         Mass        Density          Ratio
Object               a (km)    Period (d)    Size (a/Rp)     Sense          (km)        (DP/Ds)     (× 1016 kg)    (g cm–3)        (M/m)
(243) Ida             108         1.54           7.0        Prograde         1.4          22            4.2        2.6   ±   0.5   11,000
(45) Eugenia          1190        4.69          11.1        Prograde         13           17           610         1.2   ±   0.4    4900
(762) Pulcova         810          4.0          11.6                         20            7           260         1.8   ±   0.8    340
(90) Antiope          170         0.69           4.0                         85           1.0           41         1.3   ±   0.4     1.0
(87) Sylvia           1370        3.66          10.5                         13           20           1500        1.6   ±   0.3    7900
(107) Camilla        ~1000                       ~9                           9           25                                       18,000
(22) Kalliope         1060        3.60          11.7        Prograde         19           10           730         2.3 ± 0.4        870
(3749) Balam          ~350        ~100          ~100                         1.5          4.6                                        95

(617) Patroclus       610         3.41          11.6                         95           1.1           87         1.3 ± 0.5        1.3

1998   WW31         22,300        574           300*                        120*          1.2          170                          1.7
2001   QT297       ~20,000                       69†                                      1.4                                       2.6
2001   QW322       ~130,000      ~1500§         1300‡                       200*          1.0                                       1.0
1999   TC36         ~8000                        22†                                      2.8                                       21
1998   SM165        ~6000                        27†                                      2.4                                       14
1997   CQ29         ~5200                        35†                                      ~1?                                       ~1?
2000   CF105       ~23,000                       270†                                     1.6                                       3.9
‡ Assuming albedo 4% (Kavelaars et al., 2001).
§ This period is reasonable, despite the large observed separation, because of a high eccentricity (A. W. Harris, personal communication,


brighter objects. Among the objects in Merline et al.’s tar-           imaging with CCDs on large telescopes under exceptional
get lists, the S-like and C-like asteroids are about equal in          conditions, it has been possible to resolve TNO binaries.
number. (This may mean that the frequency of binaries is               Toth (1999) discusses some of the issues regarding detect-
more like 4% among the primitive asteroids.) But this is               ability of these objects. The first of these, 1998 WW31, was
not where the bias ends. To be of equal brightness, a C-               discovered by Veillet et al. (2001) in December 2000 at
like asteroid must be much larger than an S-like, and there-           CFHT. Followup observations of 1998 WW31 from ground-
fore will have a larger Hill sphere. As such, one can image            based telescopes and HST, as well as archival searches of
deeper into the gravitational well of a C-like object than an          previous datasets, indicate that the system has a size ratio
S-like object of the same apparent brightness, on average.             of about 1.2, with an eccentric (~0.8) orbit, a semimajor axis
Given that most of the observed companions reside within               near 22,000 km, and a period of ~570 d (Veillet et al., 2002).
about 12 primary radii, the companions of C-like objects                   Soon afterward, two more TNO binaries were detected
will be more easily found. Nonetheless, if the frequency of            in the same way: 2001 QT297 (Eliot et al., 2001), showing
companions were also 4% for the S-like asteroids, some                 a separation of 0.6 arcsec at time of discovery and a size
should still have been found. This raises the question as to           ratio of about 1.7; and 2001 QW322 (Kavelaars et al., 2001)
whether it is more difficult to make satellites around S-types,        with a size ratio of ~1.0 and a wide separation of 4 arcsec
which may be predominantly fractured-in-place chards,                  when discovered. Four additional TNO systems were sub-
rather than rubble piles (Britt and Consolmagno, 2001). If             sequently discovered using HST (discussed in section 2.6).
this is true, and because many of the outer-belt and Trojan            All of these systems, except one, are classical Kuiper Belt
asteroids are of primitive type, we may ultimately find a              objects, residing at ~45 AU. One system, 1999 TC36, is a
higher binary frequency among those populations.                       Plutino at ~40 AU.
   Tables 1 and 2 summarize the properties of known bi-                    For these objects, AO cannot be used directly because
nary systems discovered using adaptive-optics or direct-               they are too faint, so direct imaging, either from the ground
imaging techniques.                                                    or in ongoing campaigns on the HST, is likely to be the most
                                                                       attractive approach. Because they move slowly past field
2.3. Discovery by Direct Groundbased Imaging                           stars, it is possible to use AO to image these objects during
                                                                       appulses with brighter stars. This technique may improve
   Despite the difficulty of directly resolving a binary aster-        the overall sensitivity to fainter companions.
oid system from the ground without the assistance of adap-                 The size of the Hill sphere of an object is directly pro-
tive optics, detections have recently been achieved. By direct         portional to its distance r from the Sun, but the angular size
                                                                                  Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites   299

 (a)                                                                                         (c)


Fig. 8. (a) Arecibo delay-Doppler images of binary asteroid 2000 DP107 (Margot et al., 2002b) obtained on 2000 DOY 274-280. A
dashed line shows the approximate trajectory of the companion on consecutive days. (b) Goldstone radar echoes of 1999 KW4 (S. Ostro
et al., personal communication, 2001) accumulated over several hours during its May 2001 close approach to Earth. (c) Radar image
of 1999 KW4 obtained at Arecibo on May 27, 2001, with 7.5-m range resolution. Range from the observer increases down and Dop-
pler frequency increases to the right. Dimensions in the cross-range dimension are affected by the primary and secondary spin rates.

of a satellite orbit, as seen from Earth is inversely propor-       covery of binary systems arose with the imaging and shape
tional to the distance from the observer, ∆, which is approxi-      modeling of the strongly bifurcated NEA (4769) Castalia
mately r. So if satellites reside at the same fraction of their     (Ostro et al., 1990; Hudson and Ostro, 1994). Ostro et al.
Hill sphere from the primary, there should be no advantage          (2002) provide a thorough description of radar observations
of direct imaging in observing outer solar system objects           of asteroids.
compared with similar-sized objects in the main belt. Ap-              In continuous-wave (CW) datasets, in which echoes re-
parently, the main reasons these systems are being found            sulting from a monochromatic transmission are spectrally
with direct imaging, while those in the main belt are not,          analyzed, the diagnostic signature is that of a narrowband
is that the secondary to primary size ratios are high, mak-         spike superposed on a broadband component. The wide-
ing the secondary easier to detect, while at the same time          bandwidth echo is distinctive of a rapidly rotating primary
the satellites are more loosely bound. Additionally, the TNO        object, i.e., with spin periods of order a few hours. The
primaries are rather large, further assisting detection because     narrowband feature, which does not move at the rate asso-
of the correspondingly larger Hill sphere. Possibly, similar        ciated with the rotation of the primary, represents power
systems are rare in the main belt, and the TNO binaries are         scattered from a smaller and/or slowly spinning secondary.
formed by a different process.                                      As time goes by, the narrowband echo oscillates between
                                                                    negative and positive frequencies, representing the varia-
2.4. Radar Discovery and Characterization of                        tions in Doppler shift of a moon revolving about the sys-
Binary Near-Earth Asteroids                                         tem’s center of mass (COM). The timescale associated with
                                                                    this motion in the small sample of objects studied so far is
    The radar instruments at Goldstone and Arecibo recently         on the order of a day.
provided the first confirmed discoveries of binary asteroids           In delay-Doppler images, in which echo power is dis-
in the near-Earth population (Margot et al., 2002a,b). In the       criminated as a function of range from the observer and
two-year period preceding this writing, six near-Earth ob-          line-of-sight velocity, the signatures of two distinct compo-
jects have been unambiguously identified as binary sys-             nents are easily observed. Both the primary and secondary
tems: 2000 DP107 (Ostro et al., 2000b; Margot et al., 2000);        are typically resolved in range and Doppler, and their evolu-
2000 UG11 (Nolan et al., 2000); 1999 KW4 (Benner et al.,            tion in delay-Doppler space is consistent with the behavior
2001a); 1998 ST27 (Benner et al., 2001b); 2002 BM26                 of an orbiting binary pair. Example datasets are shown in
(Nolan et al., 2002a); and 2002 KK8 (Nolan et al., 2002b).          Fig. 8.
Previous attempts to detect asteroid satellites with radar date        The observables that can be measured from radar im-
back to the search for a synchronous moon around Pallas             ages are (1) visible range extents, which constrain the sizes
(Showalter et al., 1982). S. Ostro (personal communication,         of each component; (2) Doppler bandwidths, which con-
2001) recalls that concrete anticipation for the radar dis-         strain the spin periods of both the primary and secondary;
300        Asteroids III

                                            TABLE 3.     Binary asteroids detected by radar.

                                                                       (M1 + M2)
Object                a (m)             e              Porb (d)         (109 kg)         Rp (m)        Rs (m)      a/Rp      ρ (g cm–3)
2000   DP107       2622 ± 54     0.010 ± 0.005      1.755 ± 0.002      460 ± 50         400 ± 80       150         6.6       1.7 ± 1.1
2000   UG11         337 ± 13      0.09 ± 0.04       0.770 ± 0.003      5.1 ± 0.5        115 ± 30        50         2.9       0.8 ± 0.6
1999   KW4         2566 ± 24         ≤0.03          0.758 ± 0.001     2330 ± 230       600 ± 120       <200        4.3       2.6 ± 1.6
1998   ST27        4000–5000                                                            250–300        <50        13–20
2002   BM26                                               <3                              300           50
2002   KK8                                                                                500          100
Orbital parameters for radar-observed binary NEAs, including semimajor axis in meters, eccentricity, orbital period in days, and inferred
total mass. Size and density estimates of the primary are also listed.

(3) range and Doppler separations as a function of time,              spinup and fission, probably as a result of tidal disruption
which characterize the system’s total mass and orbital pa-            during close planetary encounters (section 3.1).
rameters; and (4) reflex motion of the primary about the                   The ability to determine the orientation of the orbital
COM, which constrains the mass ratio of the system. Al-               plane using radar depends critically on the plane-of-sky
though the location of the COM is initially uncertain, the            coverage. For 2000 DP107, which had a sky motion of ~40°
process of ephemeris refinement quickly leads to a very pre-          during radar observations, the orientation of the orbital
cise knowledge of its position in each image frame.                   plane can be constrained to within a 28° cone. In the case
   The bulk of the data analysis so far has concentrated on           of 2000 UG11 and 1999 KW4, with ~60° and ~110° of sky
using the range and Doppler separations to fit for the                motion respectively, pole solutions are expected to be bet-
system’s total mass and orbital parameters. The model as-             ter constrained. For 2000 DP107 and 1999 KW4, one can-
sumes that the orbital motion of the secondary takes place            not reject the hypothesis that the orbit is circular, but for
in a plane with an orientation that remains fixed in inertial         2000 UG11 that same hypothesis can be rejected at better
space during the time of the observations. Such mass esti-            than the 1% level.
mates, coupled with a detailed knowledge of the compo-                    Reflex motion of the primary is clearly observed in the
nent volumes from shape-modeling techniques (Hudson,                  radar datasets, providing the exciting prospect of measur-
1993), can lead to precise asteroid density measurements.             ing the densities of NEA satellites. Improved orbital fits will
The density values presented here rely on size estimates              incorporate the residual motion of the primary with respect
from visual inspection of the raw radar images and on the             to the COM and will include the mass ratio of the system
verifiable assumption that most of the system’s mass be-              as an additional parameter.
longs to the primary object.                                              Additional improvements are expected from shape
   The current best-fit orbital parameters along with the for-        reconstruction techniques (Hudson, 1993), in which a se-
mal errors of the fit are presented in Table 3. All solutions         ries of delay-Doppler images are inverted in a least-squares
have χ-squared values of =1. The best-fit mass and density            sense to provide a shape model. Given images with suffi-
estimates are also shown.                                             cient signal-to-noise ratio and orientation coverage, it is
   The binary systems observed with radar so far share                possible to infer shape and spin information for the satel-
similar characteristics. The primary components all appear            lites and to derive solid conclusions regarding spin-orbit
roughly spheroidal and have spin periods near the breakup             resonances. Apart from possibly yielding clues on forma-
limit. The secondaries have diameters on the order of one-            tion mechanisms, shape models will significantly decrease
third the diameter of the primary. All radar-observed NEA             the uncertainties associated with size/volume estimates, and
binaries have satellites orbiting at a distance of a few pri-         this will result in considerably lower error bars on the ini-
mary radii. Their orbital periods are on the order of a day.          tial density measurements presented here.
Because the spin periods of the primary are typically a few               The techniques for extracting information about binary
hours, the systems observed to date cannot be mutually syn-           systems from the radar data are still very much under ac-
chronous. The spin periods of the secondaries are indica-             tive development. At this early stage, it appears that one
tive of spin-lock configurations, which is consistent with            weakness of the radar method lies in its inability to con-
calculations of tidal despinning timescales (Margot et al.,           strain unambiguously the orientation of the orbital plane,
2002b).                                                               particularly when sky motion is limited. This is an intrin-
   The proportion of binary objects among radar-observed              sic limitation of range and line-of-sight velocity measure-
NEAs larger than 200 m is ~16% (Margot et al., 2002b).                ments obtained without angular leverage. Observations over
This large proportion requires the formation of binaries to           a range of aspect angles can overcome this ambiguity. The
be frequent compared to the ~10-m.y. dynamical lifetime               detection of occultations in the radar data or of occultations
of NEAs. Radar observations show that binary NEAs have                or eclipses from lightcurve observations can also place tight
spheroidal primaries spinning near the breakup point for              constraints on the inclination of the orbit. In general, a
strengthless bodies, suggesting that the binaries formed by           combination of radar and lightcurve observations will yield
                                                                                         Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites      301

the best orbital determinations. The radar data may in turn               mation from asteroid lightcurves is given by Weidenschil-
help the interpretation of lightcurve profiles by distinguish-            ling et al. (1989). Recent advances in methods for interpre-
ing occultations from eclipses and primary from second-                   tation of lightcurves can be found in Kaasalainen et al.
ary events. Interesting synergies are therefore expected from             (2002). While most techniques have not led to a successful
the combination of the radar and lightcurve techniques. Be-               detection of a binary asteroid, one of them, mentioned in
cause radar shadows are cast in much the same way as their                the end of section IV.B of Weidenschilling et al. (1989), has
optical counterparts, radar occultations of binary systems                been recently successful — the detection of nonsynchro-
will be observed sooner or later, in which case the orienta-              nous satellites.
tion of the orbital plane would be very tightly constrained.                  Pravec (1995) analyzes a two-period lightcurve of the
    Radar observations of binary asteroids constitute an                  NEA 1994 AW1, measured by Mottola et al. (1995) and
emerging field that holds great promise for the future. The               Pravec et al. (1995), and interprets the complex lightcurve
information that can be gathered from radar datasets in-                  as being due to occultation/eclipse events in a binary as-
cludes determination of bulk properties (e.g., density, rigid-            teroid system combined with a fast rotation of the primary.
ity), and of orbital/spin characteristics, of both components.            The results were published also in Pravec and Hahn (1997),
Combined with high-resolution imaging and shape models,                   who present the binary hypothesis as the likely explanation
these are providing powerful constraints on the formation                 of the 1994 AW1 lightcurve but also consider the possibil-
mechanisms of binary NEAs. The characteristics of eccen-                  ity that it might be an asteroid in a complex rotation state.
tricity and spin damping provide insightful clues about the               In light of more recent results (see below), the binary status
internal structure of asteroids.                                          of 1994 AW1 is quite likely and we consider it to be the
                                                                          first binary asteroid detected by the lightcurve technique.
2.5. Binary Asteroids Detected                                            See Table 4 for estimated parameters of this binary system.
by Lightcurves                                                                The second binary asteroid found from lightcurve obser-
                                                                          vations is 1991 VH (Pravec et al., 1998a). Extensive photo-
   Serious attempts to reveal the binary nature of some as-               metric observations show that the asteroid’s lightcurve is
teroids from their lightcurve features date back to the 1970s             doubly periodic and that its long-period component shows
(cf. Cellino et al., 1985). A review of the advantages and                occultation-like features; Pravec et al. interpret the data as
disadvantages of various methods of extracting such infor-                evidence that 1991 VH is an asynchronous binary system,

                               TABLE 4.         Estimated parameters of binary NEAs, detected by lightcurve.

                                                                                                    Taxonomic       Orbital
Object          Dp (km)     Ds/Dp       a/Rp           e       Porb (h)     Prot (h)   Arot (mag)     Class          Type          References
1994 AW1          0.9       0.53         4.6        <0.05       22.40       2.5193        0.16                       PHA                [1]
1991 VH            1.2       0.40        5.4         0.07       32.69       2.6238        0.11                       PHA                [2]
(3671)             0.9      >0.28        5.2                    27.72       2.7053        0.16         EM            PHA            [3,12,13]
1996 FG3          1.4       0.31         3.4         0.05       16.14       3.5942        0.09           C         PHA, VC             [4,5]
(5407)             4.0      ≥0.30       (3.4)       (<0.05)    (13.52)      2.5488        0.13          (S)          MC                 [4]
1998 PG           0.9       ≥0.30       (3.4)                  (14.01)      2.5162        0.13           S          Amor                [4]
1999 HF1          3.5       0.24         4.0                    14.02       2.3191        0.13         EMP         Aten, VC             [6]
2000 DP107        0.8       0.38         6.6        0.01        42.2        2.7755        0.22           C           PHA             [7,8,14]
2000 UG11         0.23      ≥0.6         3.6        0.12        18.4        (4.44)        0.10          QR           PHA             [13,14]
1999 KW4          1.2       ≥0.3         4.2        ≤0.03       17.45        2.765        0.13           Q         PHA, VC        [9,10,13,14]
2001 SL9          1.0       0.31         3.6                    16.40       2.4003        0.09                      Apollo             [15]
References: [1] Pravec and Hahn (1997); [2] Pravec et al. (1998a); [3] Mottola et al. (1997); [4] Pravec et al. (2000a); [5] Mottola
and Lahulla (2000); [6] Pravec et al. (2002a); [7] Margot et al. (2002b); [8] Pravec et al. (2000b); [9] Benner et al. (2001a); [10] Pravec
and Šarounová (2001); [11] Harris and Davies (1999); [12] P. Pravec et al. (unpublished data, 1997); [13] Margot et al. (2002a);
[14] P. Pravec et al. (personal communication, 2002); [15] Pravec et al. (2001).

The diameter of the primary Dp was estimated from the effective diameter 1.0 km given by Harris and Davies (1999) for (3671), and
from measured absolute magnitudes assuming the geometric albedo p = 0.06 for 1996 FG3, and 2000 DP107, and p = 0.16 for the
other objects; it was corrected for Ds/Dp = 0.4 in cases where only a lower limit on the secondary-to-primary diameter ratio is available.
a is the semimajor axis of the mutual orbit, e is its eccentricity, Porb is the orbital period. Prot is the rotation period of the primary, Arot
is its amplitude corrected for contribution of the light from the secondary. The values in brackets are derived using the assumptions
discussed in Pravec et al. (2000a). PHA stands for potentially hazardous asteroid, which is an object approaching closer than 0.05 AU
to the Earth’s orbit, VC stands for Venus-crosser, MC stands for Mars-crosser. This table has been updated from Pravec et al. (2000a).
For uncertainties and assumptions made with the estimates, see the original publications. Note that some of these objects are in com-
mon with NEAs observed by radar, in Table 3. An updated, combined radar/lightcurve NEA table is maintained at
302                          Asteroids III

similar to 1994 AW1. The same or similar observational and                                               ing primaries only under favorable geometric conditions.
analysis techniques have been used to reveal the binary                                                  Another bias is that detection of close binary systems is
nature of several other objects, shown in Table 4. The gen-                                              favored, because observations and their interpretation are
eral technique has been validated by the radar detection of                                              easier for systems with shorter orbital periods. Satellites
the binary status of 2000 DP107, for which Pravec et al.                                                 smaller than ~20% of the primary diameter are difficult or
(2000b) and P. Pravec et al. (personal communication,                                                    impossible to detect unambiguously from lightcurve obser-
2002) observe a two-period lightcurve of the same kind as                                                vations because they produce only small brightness attenu-
in the previous cases and estimate parameters of the binary                                              ations during occultations or eclipses, less than ~0.04 mag.
system that are in agreement with results from the radar ob-                                             This may be difficult to separate from other effects, like an
servations.                                                                                              evolution of the primary’s rotational lightcurve in chang-
    This lightcurve technique for detecting binaries has been                                            ing observational geometric conditions. The asynchronous
described in the above-mentioned papers as well as in more                                               rotation of the primary allows one to resolve the occulta-
recent works by Pravec et al. (2000a) and Mottola and                                                    tion/eclipse events, which occur with a period different from
Lahulla (2000). Briefly, it is based on detecting brightness                                             the rotation period of the primary, and therefore one may
attenuations caused by mutual occultations or eclipses be-                                               rule out their possible connection with any peculiar shape
tween components of the binary system superposed on the                                                  feature of the primary. Occultations or eclipses can be ob-
short-period rotational lightcurve of the primary. An ex-                                                served only when the Earth or Sun, respectively, lie close
ample is shown in Fig. 9. The principles of the technique                                                enough to the mutual orbital plane of the binary system.
introduce several selection effects. The technique can reveal                                            These selection effects mean that there may be a bias to-
the existence of large satellites around asynchronously rotat-                                           ward binary systems with certain favorable parameters in
                                                                                                         the sample of known or suspected binary asteroids pre-
                                                                                                         sented in Table 4. Nevertheless, at least some of the simi-
                                                                                                         larities of the characteristics of the binary asteroids cannot
                                                                                                         be explained by selection effects alone and must be real.
                                                                                                             The similarities of the 13 NEA binary asteroids, known
 R (1,17.0 degrees)

                                                                                                         or suspected from lightcurve or radar observations, are:
                                                                                                             1. They are small objects with primary diameters 0.7–
                                                                                                         4.0 km. The lower limit may be due to a bias against detec-
                                                                                                         tion of small binary systems, because fainter asteroids are
                                                                                                         normally more difficult to observe. There may exist an upper
                      18.8                                                                               limit but it is difficult to estimate from the small sample.
                                                                                                             2. They all are inner planet-crossers. Most of them ap-
                              1998 Dec. 17.9 - Primary minimum + fast variation
                                                                                                         proach the orbits of Earth and Venus. This feature may be
                      18.9                                                                               due, at least partly, to a selection effect, as kilometer-sized
                                 64.7          64.8          64.9          65.0            65.1          asteroids are much easier to observe in near-Earth space
                                                      JD-2451100.5                                       than in the main belt. Another possible selection effect is
                      18.5                                                                               that more observations are being made, in general, of near-
                                                                                                         Earth objects.
                                                                                                             3. All the primaries are fast rotators (periods 2.3–3.6 h),
                      18.6                                                                               not far below the critical stability spin rate, with low ampli-
 R (1,17.0 degrees)

                                                                                                         tudes (0.1–0.2 mag), suggesting nearly spheroidal shapes
                                                                                                         (see Pravec et al., 2002b).
                      18.7                                                                                   4. The secondary-to-primary diameter ratios are almost
                                                                                                         all in the range of 0.2–0.6. While the lower limit may be
                                                                                                         just a result of the selection effect mentioned above, it ap-
                                                                                                         pears that binaries with nearly equal-sized components are
                                                                                                         rare among kilometer-sized NEAs. The probability that
                              1998 Dec. 10.0 - Secondary minimum + fast variation
                                                                                                         there are twelve objects with the diameter ratios in the range
                          56.8          56.9          57.0          57.1            57.2          57.3   of 0.2–0.6 and one in 0.6–1.0, for a uniform distribution of
                                                      JD-2451100.5                                       diameter ratios, is less than 0.2%.
                                                                                                             5. Semimajor axes estimates are in the range 3.4–6.6
                                                                                                         primary radii. While the upper limit may be due to the selec-
Fig. 9. Observed lightcurves of 1996 FG3 show the fast-varia-
tion, small-amplitude component, caused by the rotation of the
                                                                                                         tion effect mentioned above, the lower limit (corresponding
primary, with superposed sudden sharp attenuations caused by the                                         to orbital periods ~14 h) may be real, and it suggests that
eclipse/occultation of the primary by the secondary. The top panel                                       very close binary systems are not present (perhaps due to
shows the primary minimum, while the bottom panel shows the                                              their instabilities).
secondary minimum. The primary rotation component can be seen                                                6. Eccentricities are poorly constrained but appear to be
also during the attenuations. (From Pravec et al., 2000a.)                                               low (less than 0.1).
                                                                                                        Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites                303

   Pravec et al. (1999) accounted for the bias due to the                                   10
selection effect related to the geometric observing condi-
tions and estimated, on the basis of the first three known                                                                                  WFPC
binary NEAs, that the fraction of binaries among NEAs is                                                                                    WFPC2
≈17% with an uncertainty factor of 2. This is consistent with                                8       Don’t detect                           FOC
the estimates from radar data that ~16% of NEAs are bi-
nary (Margot et al., 2002b), and the estimates (about 15%)                                                                                              146
of Bottke and Melosh (1996a,b) from models of binary pro-

                                                                     Magnitude Difference
duction by tidal disruption (see section 3.1). Based on these
studies, we adopt 16% as our working estimate of the NEA
binary fraction. We note that ~30% of kilometer-sized as-
teroids are fast rotators with periods <4 h and that binary
NEAs have fast-rotating primaries. Therefore, it may be that
roughly half of the fast-rotating NEAs are binary (Pravec
and Harris, 2000) and that binary asteroids are common                                                                     532
among fast-rotating objects on Earth-approaching orbits.
2.6. Hubble Space Telescope (HST)                                                            2                                   detect             9

Companion Searches

    One of the major projects that Zellner et al. (1989) ex-
pected to be addressed by HST was the search for asteroid                                    0       624
                                                                                                 0        0.2       0.4    0.6            0.8       1         1.2
companions. The absence of atmospheric effects on HST
                                                                                                                     Separation (arcsec)
images allows diffraction-limited operation over a very large
field of view. The spherical aberration of the primary mirror
did not stop the execution of an early attempt to survey the      Fig. 10. Brightness difference (in magnitudes) between a pri-
asteroid belt (program 4521) as well as an “amateur” pro-         mary asteroid and a possible companion as a function of projected
gram that targeted asteroids thought to have companions,          distance from the primary asteroid, for well-exposed HST images
primarily from occultation observations (program 4764).           (after Storrs et al., 1999a). The region below the curves is where
No companions were found but careful restoration of the           companions could be detected. Also shown are the locations of
                                                                  putative binaries (given by asteroid number) previously suspected
data was necessary to minimize the effects of the aberra-
                                                                  from occultation or other data.
tion. While aberration did not limit the spatial resolution
of the images (the middle two-thirds of the primary was
ground correctly), the additional “skirt” of scattered light
did limit the dynamic range over which a companion could          lar to that used to map (4) Vesta by Binzel et al. (1997).
be detected.                                                      This program resulted in the discovery of a companion to
    Storrs et al. (1999a) published the data from these two       (107) Camilla (Storrs et al., 2001a) and confirmed observa-
programs. Their reconstruction of the HST images allowed          tions of companions to (87) Sylvia (Storrs et al., 2001b) and
upper limits to be put on the presence of companions to as-       (45) Eugenia. The companions to (45) Eugenia and (107)
teroids (9) Metis, (18) Melpomene, (19) Fortuna, (109) Felic-     Camilla have the same color in the visible range as their
itas, (146) Lucina, (216) Kleopatra, (434) Hungaria, (532)        primaries. Storrs et al. (2001b) report that the companion to
Herculina, (624) Hektor, and (674) Rachele. No compan-            (87) Sylvia appears significantly bluer than its primary. The
ions were found to a brightness limit that varied with dis-       observations of (6) Hebe in this program reveal no compan-
tance from the primary, as shown in Fig. 10. Barring the          ions brighter than 7 mag fainter than the primary, or larger
companion being in conjunction at the time of observation,        than 8 km in diameter.
Storrs et al. rule out companion objects (suggested by early          Another program for observing main-belt asteroids, that
occultation observations) to asteroids (9) Metis, (18) Mel-       of Zappalà and colleagues, used the HST Fine Guidance
pomene, and (532) Herculina (the brightness and separation        Sensor (FGS). The first results of this program confirmed
of suggested companions are designated by the numbers in          that (216) Kleopatra is a contact binary (Tanga et al., 2001).
Fig. 10).                                                         Two other programs are under way, both of them targeting
    Program 6559 (Storrs et al., 1998, 1999b) detected no         TNOs; both began to detect binaries in early 2002. A large
companions to the eight asteroids imaged by HST with the          program by M. Brown has detected two TNO companions:
corrected Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) instru-           1999 TC36 (Trujillo and Brown, 2002) and 1998 SM165
ment. Further HST imaging observations are currently un-          (Brown and Trujillo, 2002). In a second program, two more
der way in program 8583, which is a “snapshot” program            binaries have been found: 1997 CQ29 (Noll et al., 2002a)
designed to fill in gaps in the spacecraft’s calendar of obser-   and 2000 CF105 (Noll et al., 2002b). As in the case of the
vations. The program targets 50 large, main-belt asteroids        other known TNO binaries, these objects have a wide sepa-
(many of them twice) with the WFPC2 in a manner simi-             ration and relatively large secondaries.
304       Asteroids III

    The strengths and weaknesses of HST/WFPC2 obser-               renewed interest in theories of formation and in numerical
vations of asteroids are discussed in Dotto et al. (2002).         modeling of binary origin. All of the formation mechanisms
Briefly, WFPC2 observations allow diffraction-limited ob-          discussed by Weidenschilling et al. remain viable. Here we
servation over a large field of view from the vacuum UV            revisit these and add others.
to beyond 1-µm wavelength. These high-resolution images
can provide information on the shape and mineralogical             3.1. Near-Earth Asteroids: Tidal Encounters
variegation of the primary as well. Drawbacks include the
robotic nature of HST scheduling (ephemerides good to                 As discussed in sections 2.4 and 2.5, a significant fraction
better than 10 arcsec for over a year are necessary to find        (16%) of NEAs appear to be binary. This is much higher
the asteroid), no sensitivity beyond 1 µm [but see Dotto et        than their apparent abundance in the main belt (although
al. (2002) for a discussion of WF3, which will operate to          detection is more difficult for the latter), but is consistent
1.8 µm], and the difficulty in getting observing time on HST       with the fraction of recognized doublet craters in impacts
(no immediate follow up of detections). HST observations           on Earth (Weidenschilling et al., 1989). Apparently, some
are complementary to groundbased AO observations be-               mechanism favors production of binaries among planet-
cause they cover a larger field of view per exposure at a          crossers (unless it is possible to get small main-belt binaries
shorter wavelength, but cannot cover the critical near-IR          to be ejected from the belt intact). A close planetary en-
wavelength region.                                                 counter can subject an asteroid to tidal stresses and torques
                                                                   that may produce a binary. The same process, however, can
2.7. Role of Occultations                                          also disrupt existing binary systems. Because the lifetime
                                                                   of NEAs is relatively short (a few times 107 yr) and close
    Described as a technique of searching for asteroid satel-      encounters are more probable than planetary impacts, this
lites by Van Flandern et al. (1979) in Asteroids, the method       formation/destruction is an equilibrium process. Bottke and
of using stellar occultations suffers from the inability to plan   Melosh (1996a,b) examine the effect of planetary encoun-
or repeat an experiment, at least reliably. Reitsema (1979)        ters on contact binaries (two components) and conclude
has called into question many of the early reports of satel-       that ~15% of Earth-crossers evolve into coorbiting binaries.
lites, indicating that the measurements are susceptible to         Richardson et al. (1998) and Bottke et al. (1999), model
spurious events. One-time reports of occultations can serve        the tidal disruption of ellipsoidal rubble-pile asteroids (com-
only to alert more rigorous search methods of a potential          posed of many small, equal-sized particles) encountering
candidate. In addition, once an asteroid is known to have a        Earth and find that rotational spin-up frequently cause them
moon, systematic networks of observers may be placed as            to undergo mass shedding. In many cases, some of the shed
to attempt to see an event from the moon during an occulta-        fragments go into orbit around the progenitor, producing
tion of the primary. These observations could greatly con-         binary asteroids. Most of these satellites, however, are much
strain our understanding of the sizes and positions of the         smaller than the primary. Also, the yield of binaries is low;
satellites.                                                        disruption into a string of clumps, as for comet Shoemaker-
    It is important to note, however, that archived occulta-       Levy 9, is more probable than binary formation. The results
tion records (D. Dunham, personal communication, 2001)             of these studies suggest that tidal disruption can produce
have shown that two short events have been recorded ac-            enough binaries to account for the observed population of
companying an occultation of Eugenia (diameter 215 km).            doublet craters on the terrestrial planets, provided that small
One was in 1983 (chord equivalent ~9 km) and another in            asteroids (less than a few kilometers in diameter) are not
1994 (chord equivalent ~20 km). Another short event, of            finely divided gravel piles, but “coarse” structures domi-
chord size 18 km, was recorded in 1997 during an occul-            nated by a few large chunks. This inference is also consis-
tation of Sylvia (diameter 271 km). The satellite diameters        tent with their observed maximum rotation rates (cf.
predicted from AO observations are 13 km for Eugenia and           Paolicchi et al., 2002).
13 km for Sylvia. It is unlikely that such short chords would
have resulted from asteroids of this large size. Therefore,        3.2. Cratering Ejecta
it is possible that these occultations in fact did record satel-
lite events.                                                           A cratering event from a subcatastrophic impact on an
                                                                   asteroid produces ejecta with a range of velocities. It is
         3.   ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF                              therefore likely that some of the ejecta will have sufficient
                BINARY ASTEROIDS                                   kinetic energy and angular momentum to go into orbit about
                                                                   the target body. Except in highly oblique impacts, the ejecta
   In Asteroids II, Weidenschilling et al. (1989) discussed        leave the crater with a more or less uniform azimuthal dis-
the most promising mechanisms for formation of asteroid            tribution as seen in the frame of the target’s surface. If the
binaries. Most of the progress since that time has been ob-        target is rotating, the rotational velocity of the surface at
servational, but theoretical efforts, especially numerical         the impact point is added to the ejecta velocity; therefore,
modeling, have also made advances. With the new examples           more mass will attain orbital velocity in the prograde di-
of actual binary systems to study, there has recently been a       rection (we assume that the impact is not large enough to
                                                                                 Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites   305

make a significant change in the target’s rotational state).       also have been larger than modeled). Indeed, several pro-
The problem with this model is how to place the ejecta into        cesses that subsequently have been shown to play impor-
stable orbits. If the target is a sphere with a purely radial      tant roles in placing material into bound orbits (e.g., distor-
gravity field, then the ejecta particles have elliptical orbits    tion of the primary’s shape, vaporization of some fraction
that would intersect the surface after one revolution. Colli-      of material, impact angle) were not included in the model-
sions between fragments, as well as solar perturbations act-       ing. Instead, the Durda and Geissler model, which has
ing on particles with highly eccentric orbits, might prevent       proved quite successful in explaining the distribution of
immediate reimpact, but these apparently inefficient mecha-        ejecta on Ida’s surface (Geissler et al., 1996), simulated the
nisms would have to act during the first orbit after the im-       ejection of crater debris from various locations on Ida by
pact. However, many asteroids are significantly nonspheri-         launching particles from a point at a 45° angle to the local
cal (triaxial) in shape and usually rotate about their shortest    surface. The particles were all launched at the same instant
axis. This means that ejecta particles experience a noncen-        at the beginning of the simulations, with no momentum
tral gravity field, which can significantly alter their orbital    transfer to the asteroid. In reality, excavation flows encom-
parameters on the timescale of a single orbit. Also, a particle    pass the entire center-to-rim extent of a crater, the timescale
launched from a point near the longer equatorial axis may          for crater excavation on a low-gravity object can approach
encounter a shorter axis during its first few periapse pas-        a significant fraction of the asteroid rotation period, and
sages, avoiding impact and prolonging its lifetime. Mutual         translational and rotational momentum is imparted to the
collisions among fragments during the first few orbits can         primary during the impact (e.g., Asphaug et al., 1996; Love
dampen their eccentricities, yielding orbits that no longer        and Ahrens, 1997). Thus, a combination of shape/distortion
intersect the primary’s surface. This material could then ac-      effects and translational/rotational motion during the exca-
crete into a small satellite. As pointed out by Weidenschil-       vation phase may play an important role in allowing parti-
ling et al. (1989), ejecta velocities must be within the limited   cles to remain in temporary orbit.
range that allows material to go into orbit about the primary         This mechanism would operate in the environment of
without escaping completely. Such orbits have specific an-         high-velocity impacts in the present main belt. Impacts are
gular momentum corresponding to circularized orbits within         also capable of destroying small satellites, which would
a distance of about 2 radii from the primary. Unless this          have shorter lifetimes against disruption than their prima-
distance is outside the synchronous point, any satellite that      ries (although they might reaccrete after such events if the
accreted in this manner would be subject to tidal decay and        fragments remain in orbit). Thus, we expect the population
would eventually collide with the primary. The requirement         of such binaries to be in equilibrium between formation and
that the synchronous distance lies within 2 radii implies a        destruction by impacts.
spin period of not more than ~6 h. Tidal torque would then            Of the main-belt asteroids known to be binaries, six of
cause the satellite to migrate outward; for small secondary/       eight (22, 45, 87, 107, 243, and 762) have satellites much
primary mass ratios, the primary’s spin would not be slowed        smaller than their primaries. Assuming equal albedos and
significantly. Thus, satellites formed by this mechanism           densities for both components, the mass ratio is typically
would be small rubble piles in prograde orbits about rapidly       ~10 –3. Significantly, all the primaries are rapid rotators; the
rotating primaries. In addition to these criteria listed by        longest period is 5.84 h for (762) (Davis, 2001). Also, they
Weidenschilling et al., we add the requirement that the pri-       have rather large amplitude lightcurves, with maximum
maries be significantly nonspherical.                              observed amplitudes of at least 0.25 mag. These properties
    In a preliminary numerical study to explore the viabil-        are consistent with the formation of their satellites from im-
ity of this mechanism for producing small satellites, Durda        pact ejecta. If the direction of an orbit relative to the rota-
and Geissler (1996) examined the accretion of ejecta par-          tion of the primary is found to be prograde, this would be
ticles from three different 10-km-scale craters on Ida. In         a strong indication of their origin by this mechanism. The
each case they followed the dynamical evolution of 1000            sense of the orbit is known for three of these main-belt
ejecta particles for 100 h after the cratering impact and          binaries. The moons of (243) Ida (Belton et al., 1995, 1996),
searched for “collisions” between orbiting particles, treat-       (45) Eugenia (Merline et al., 1999b,c), and (22) Kalliope
ing each “collision” as an accretion event. That study found       orbit in a prograde sense.
that temporary aggregates containing ~0.1% of the ejected
debris mass did indeed form while in flight around the pri-        3.3.   Disruptive Capture
mary, but none of these aggregates occupied stable orbits
and survived [although the temporary aggregates were pri-             Many asteroids belong to dynamical families that reveal
marily on prograde trajectories concentrated near the equa-        them to be fragments of larger parent bodies that were dis-
torial plane of Ida, as predicted by Weidenschilling et al.        rupted by catastrophic collisions. In such a disruptive event,
(1989)]. The failure of the model to yield small satellites        fragments may end up in orbit about each other, as sug-
via accretion of ejected cratering debris may not be evi-          gested by Hartmann (1979). Weidenschilling et al. (1989)
dence that this mechanism fails to work or is incredibly           point out that in a radial-velocity field of fragments escaping
inefficient, but instead may be a result of the approxima-         from a disrupted primary, geometrical constraints imposed
tions inherent to the model (the Dactyl-forming impact may         by the finite sizes of fragments would tend to ensure that
306          Asteroids III

                             Strength, Time = 100.006 s

       2.00 × 107                                                              1.89


       1.00 × 107

       0.00 × 107


      –1.00 × 107                                                              1.11

                    –1.00 × 107   0.00 × 100       1.00 × 107   2.00 × 107
                                               x                                      SwRI
      UCSCSPH                                                                         xplot

Fig. 11. The “next generation” of numerical models of asteroid satellite formation substantially improve upon past models by (left)
conducting detailed three-dimensional smooth-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) models of collisions between asteroids and then (right)
following the subsequent dynamics of ejected debris and formation of orbiting satellites (arrow) through fast, state-of-the-art N-body
simulations. Shown here is a collision of a 20-km impactor into a 100-km solid basaltic target, as simulated by Durda et al. (2001).
The ~4-km satellite is captured into an elliptical orbit with a separation of about 6 Rprimary. The final primary diameter is ~75 km.

they would have relative velocities exceeding their mutual                            cle hydrodynamics (SPH) models of catastrophic collisions
escape velocity and in general would not remain gravita-                              between asteroids (e.g., Benz and Asphaug, 1995; Asphaug
tionally bound.                                                                       et al., 1998) and then following the subsequent dynamics of
   This problem was examined in some detail by Durda                                  the ejected fragments through fast, state-of-the-art N-body
(1996) and by Doressoundiram et al. (1997), who simulated                             simulations (such as described in Leinhardt et al., 2000).
disruptions numerically, integrating orbits of fragments in                               One of the most important benefits of this scheme over
the debris field. They found that the fraction of binaries                            the previous numerical studies is that it includes a rigorous
depends on the magnitude of a random velocity dispersion                              treatment of the impact physics, so that accurate fragment
assumed to be imposed on the general expansion; however,                              size distributions and velocity fields are established early
even with no dispersion some binaries were produced, ap-                              in the ejection process. Thus, the dependence of satellite
parently by jostling among fragments. More pairs of frag-                             formation efficiency with respect to various collision param-
ments in contact were produced than orbiting binaries. The                            eters (e.g., speed, impact parameter, impact angle) can be
fraction of contact pairs and binaries was small in Durda’s                           studied in a self-consistent manner. These new models also
models (~0.1%), while the fraction of binaries found by                               allow for a far-faster N-body integration scheme with effi-
Doressoundiram et al. was ~1%. The limited range of sizes                             cient mutual capture and collision detection capabilities. A
and numbers of particles in the simulations probably lim-                             sample model can be seen in Fig. 11.
ited the binary fraction. Treating larger numbers of smaller                              Four of the known main-belt binaries (45, 90, 243, and
fragments would be expected to yield more binaries with                               3749) are members of dynamical families, so this mecha-
smaller satellite:primary mass ratios.                                                nism is plausible (possibly, the fraction of binaries in fami-
    The early, simple numerical models of this mode of                                lies is greater than for the general population). There should
satellite formation contained some critical limitations, how-                         be no initial preference for rapid rotation of primaries or
ever. Because the initial conditions simulating the expan-                            prograde orbits, but tidal dissipation could cause loss of
sion phase following a catastrophic impact were merely                                satellites of slow rotators or in retrograde orbits. We would
treated in a simple empirical fashion, a self-consistent de-                          expect no correlation with the primary’s shape, so light-
scription of the mass-speed distribution of fragments and                             curves may discriminate between cratering ejecta and dis-
the direction of fragment ejection was not possible. Varia-                           ruptive capture.
tions in these collision outcomes, and therefore in the effi-
ciency of binary-pair formation, with initial conditions,                             3.4. Collisional Fission
could not be examined in these initial studies. The next
generation of numerical models (Michel et al., 2001; Durda                               An impact may shatter an asteroid without disrupting it.
et al., 2001) substantially improve upon the limitations of                           As the probability of an exactly central collision is zero, it
the Durda (1996) and Doressoundiram et al. (1997) mod-                                will also impart angular momentum to the target. If the
els by conducting detailed three-dimensional smooth-parti-                            specific angular momentum exceeds a threshold value, a
                                                                               Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites   307

weak (shattered) self-gravitating body cannot remain single       magnitude initially after breakup. However, the time avail-
but must fission into a binary, with some of the angular          able before randomization is short (~10 4 orbital periods),
momentum in orbital motion rather than rotation. The angu-        and a collision between two fragments of sufficient size is
lar momentum imparted is proportional to the impact veloc-        unlikely. In either scenario, the probability of forming a
ity v, while the impact energy scales as v2. As discussed by      binary with these properties is only ~10 –3, and thus Antiope
Weidenschilling et al. (1989), it is difficult to impart enough   should be unique in the main belt.
angular momentum without destroying the target at typi-
cal impact velocities (~5 km s–1) in the present belt (al-        3.5.   Primordial Binaries?
though there is a distribution of velocities over a wide range,
but at lower impact probabilities). If gravitational binding          Other binaries with components of comparable mass and
dominates, then for impacts large enough to impart the criti-     large separations have been discovered, but at larger helio-
cal angular momentum, the ratio of impact energy to bind-         centric distances. The Trojan asteroid (617) Patroclus (Mer-
ing energy is of order vimpact/vescape. For even the largest      line et al., 2001b) and at least two of the TNO binaries
asteroids, disruption is more likely than rotational fission      (1998 WW31, 2001 QW322) have size ratios close to one.
in the present collisional environment. Conditions were pre-      All have significantly greater separations than Antiope:
sumably more favorable in the earliest stage of the belt’s        ~600 km (~12 radii) for Patroclus and 104–105 km (~102–
evolution, before velocities were pumped up; however, only        103 radii) for the TNOs. In one sense, these properties are
large satellites would have been able to survive its later col-   not surprising, because detection of smaller and/or closer
lisional history. No convincing candidate systems have yet        satellites of such distant objects is impossible with current
been found in the main belt.                                      technology. However, it is unclear how such loosely bound
    The masses and relatively large separation (~4 radii) of      pairs could have formed. If the Patroclus binary formed by
the main-belt double (90) Antiope imaged by Merline et al.        a collision, it would have required more extreme param-
(2000a,b) mean that this pair has unusually high specific         eters (larger impactor and/or lower velocity) than Antiope’s
angular momentum. The lightcurve eclipses recorded by             formation. The collision rate in the Trojan clouds is some-
Hansen et al. (1997) are consistent with the nearly equal-        what higher than in the main belt (see Davis et al., 2002),
sized components seen in the images. At other times, the          while the mean impact velocity is comparable (lower orbital
lightcurve had a low amplitude consistent with nearly spher-      velocity is offset by higher mean inclination). However, a
ical, noneclipsing components (actually, Darwin ellipsoids        binary of this size would have a collisional lifetime greater
are an even better match). Merline et al. (2000a,b) inferred      than the age of the solar system. It is plausible, therefore,
a density of ~1.3 g cm–3, which suggests that the Antiope         that the Patroclus binary formed by a low-velocity collision
components may be “rubble piles” with equilibrium shapes.         before eccentricities and inclinations were pumped up, per-
Such models of equilibrium binaries and the expected light-       haps before its capture into resonance with Jupiter.
curve morphologies were studied by Leone et al. (1984).               The frequency of transneptunian binaries appears to be
The origin of the Antiope binary is hard to explain. It is a      ~1%. Their large separations could not have been produced
member of the Themis family and so must postdate the dis-         by two-body collisions or tidal evolution. The most plau-
ruption of its parent body by a high-velocity impact. Dis-        sible origin for such a loosely bound binary seems to be an
ruptive capture of two equal-mass fragments of such large         impact with another body of comparable mass while the two
size in that event is unlikely, and they would have to be con-    components passed within their mutual Hill radius. The
verted to rubble piles by later impacts. However, some of         present spatial density in the Kuiper Belt is far too low for
the model runs of P. Michel (personal communication,              three-body encounters; any such events must have occurred
2001) appear to produce similar-sized components. Colli-          when it was more populous and/or dynamically “cold” with
sional fission seems to be the most likely origin for Antiope,    low inclinations. Dynamical modeling is needed to deter-
but still presents the problem of imparting so much angular       mine the efficiency of binary production by this mechanism
momentum in a collision without dispersing the target. Due        as a function of population density and orbital parameters.
to the low orbital inclination of the Themis family, collisions   Alternatively, these binaries may represent objects that
between members have a lower mean velocity [~3 km s–1             formed as loosely bound pairs from inherent disk instabili-
(Bottke et al., 1994)] than between field asteroids (~5 km        ties during accretion (S. A. Stern, personal communication,
s–1) but this difference is not very significant. Weidenschil-    2001). Observations of binary TNOs will eventually allow
ling et al. (2001) estimate that the required angular momen-      direct determination of their masses and densities, but may
tum implies an impactor of diameter ~20 km on a 100-km            also provide a constraint on the formation and early his-
target body, with about 100 times its gravitational binding       tory of the Kuiper Belt.
energy, at the mean encounter velocity. An impact by a
larger body at much lower velocity is improbable, even if the     3.6.   Tidal Evolution of Spins and Orbits
Themis family is several billion years old. Low-velocity
impacts could have occurred in the immediate aftermath of            Weidenschilling et al. (1989) consider the tidal evolu-
the disruption of the Themis family’s parent body, before         tion of orbits of asteroid satellites. Their Fig. 1 shows the
Jovian perturbations randomized the nodes and apsides of          timescale for a hypothetical satellite to evolve outward from
the fragments. Models by Dell’Oro et al. (2002) show an           an orbit initially close to a primary of radius R = 100 km,
enhancement in the impact probabilities of several orders of      as a function of the satellite:primary mass ratio. There are
308       Asteroids III

now enough data for real binaries to compare this model             Petit et al., 1997). Significant progress, however, has been
with observation. Most of the known main-belt binaries              made in the understanding of triple- or multiple-star sys-
have separations a/R ~ 10, and M/m ~ 3 × 102–104 (Table 2);         tems. Many of these results can be applied directly to aster-
the inferred tidal evolution timescales are in the range ~108–      oids for insight into what characteristics might be expected
109 yr. These values depend on the mechanical properties            for multiple-asteroid systems. It is generally accepted that
of the primaries, which are uncertain, but are consistent with      the masses would be configured in a hierarchical fashion
collisional production of close binaries and tidal expansion        (cf. Eggleton and Kiseleva, 1995). This would involve the
of their orbits to their present distances since the forma-         superposition of two binary systems: an inner massive
tion of the asteroid belt. All such satellites lie below the line   object orbited by a satellite and a moon of the satellite (like
of synchronous stability, with orbits that are still evolving       Sun/Earth/Moon) or a close binary system with a tertiary
outward (consistent with the observation that their prima-          object in a wide orbit about the central pair. The ratio of the
ries have rotation periods shorter than their orbital periods).     semimajor axes of the two relevant “binaries” must be ~3–
The NEAs typically have smaller separations with a/R ~ 5,           4 to be stable (Harrington, 1977a,b). For eccentric orbits,
and smaller M/m ~ 101–2 × 102. However, they are much               the ratio of the periapse of the outer orbit to the inner semi-
smaller than the main-belt binaries, with R ~ 1 km; since the       major axis is the relevant parameter. Eccentric orbits are
rate of tidal evolution of orbits scales as R2, they also have      therefore less stable (Eggleton and Kiseleva, 1995; Kiseleva
timescales ~109 yr, consistent with the observation that they       et al., 1994). In addition, the stability depends, in a compli-
have not evolved to a synchronous end state. The binaries           cated way, on the mass ratios of the objects (Black, 1982).
with relatively close massive satellites have much shorter          Systems that have the two orbits counter-revolving (retro-
evolution times; extrapolating from Weidenschilling et al.’s        grade) also display greater stability than if the orbits are
Fig. 1, (90) Antiope would have reached its tidally locked          both in the same sense (Harrington, 1977b). Recent work
end state in only a few thousand years, and (617) Patroclus         on evolution of triple systems (Miller and Hamilton, 2002)
in less than 106 yr. However, it can be seen from that fig-         emphasizes the importance of Kozai resonances in stabil-
ure that Patroclus has too much angular momentum to have            ity and indicates a strong preference that the orbits be ap-
evolved by despinning of an initially close binary. This            proximately coplanar. Multiple systems would be formed
system, and the Kuiper Belt binaries with comparable mass           in successively higher levels of hierarchy as discussed by
ratios and still larger separations, must have attained their       Harrington (1977b).
present orbital configurations by a mechanism other than               Unlike triple-star systems, which can form by gravita-
tidal despinning.                                                   tional capture, (e.g., during the collision of two binary sys-
    The timescale for despinning of a satellite’s rotation by       tems), such a formation mechanism would be difficult for
tides is generally shorter than that for evolution of its orbit     asteroids because of the high encounter velocities relative
by despinning of the primary. Using the classic formula for         to the orbital speeds (P. Hut, personal communication,
the rate of despinning (Goldreich and Soter, 1966), the             2002). The initial formation of triple/multiple systems were
smaller main-belt and NEA satellites have despinning times          indicated, however, in the early numerical models of Durda
of ~106–107 yr, so they would be expected to keep one face          (1996) and Doressoundiram et al. (1997) and are clearly
toward their primary. The only observational datum for rota-        produced by the next-generation models of Michel et al.
tion of a main-belt satellite is from the Galileo flyby of Ida/     (2001) and Durda et al. (2001). These SPH/N-body mod-
Dactyl, which shows that Dactyl had slow rotation, consis-          els of satellite formation show that in addition to produc-
tent with spin-orbit synchronicity (Veverka et al., 1996b).         ing binary systems with a single satellite in orbit about a
On the other hand, the known Kuiper Belt binaries have              primary asteroid, catastrophic disruption events can result
such large separations that their tidal despinning times prob-      (at least initially) in more complex, hierarchical systems
ably exceed the age of the solar system; they are unlikely to       with satellites of satellites. The gravitational reaccumulation
be in synchronous rotation.                                         of clumps of debris in the ejecta field around the largest
    Finally, Harris (2002) has suggested that the gravita-          remnant often leads to Shoemaker-Levy/9-like “strings-of-
tional ejection of a satellite from orbit around an irregu-         pearls.” Many of these reaccumulating rubble-pile frag-
larly shaped primary would deplete the rotational energy            ments, some of which are gravitationally bound in initially
of the primary, thus slowing substantially the spin of the          stable orbits around the largest remnant, are themselves sur-
primary. This ultimately may be shown to be the cause of            rounded by swarms of smaller orbiting debris. The simula-
the anomalously slow rotation of many asteroids, which so           tion timescales are too short, thus far, to directly examine the
far have eluded satisfactory explanation.                           longer-term stability of these hierarchical satellite systems.

3.7. Triple and Multiple Systems                                                          4.   SUMMARY

    Little work has been done specifically on the formation             The question posed in the title to the Weidenschilling et
and stability of triple or multiple asteroid systems. Perhaps       al. chapter in Asteroids II, “Do Asteroids Have Satellites?,”
the closest analogs are those studies of the stability of sat-      has now been answered. Now that we have many examples
ellites around a nonspherical primary (e.g., Scheeres, 1994;        of binary systems for study, representing diverse collisional
                                                                                     Merline et al.: Asteroids Do Have Satellites      309

and dynamical populations, we may be at the threshold of                 asteroid families: Observational and numerical results. Icarus,
a revolution in asteroid science. In the next decade, we can             73, 303–313.
expect to learn a great deal from the ever-increasing pace            Binzel R. P., Gaffey M. J., Thomas P. C., Zellner B. H., Storrs
of discovery, involving several rapidly improving, comple-               A. D., and Wells E. N. (1997) Geologic mapping of Vesta from
                                                                         1994 Hubble Space Telescope images. Icarus, 128, 95–103.
mentary techniques, as well as the concomitant numerical
                                                                      Black D. C. (1982) A simple criterion for determining the dynami-
modeling and theoretical thinking about how these systems
                                                                         cal stability of three-body systems. Astron. J., 87, 1333–1337.
were formed, how they evolve, and what clues they hold                Bottke W. F. Jr. and Melosh H. J. (1996a) The formation of aster-
to the history of the solar system. These binary systems will            oid satellites and doublet craters by planetary tidal forces. Na-
provide probes of asteroid interiors and perhaps will even-              ture, 381, 51–53.
tually allow definitive coupling of asteroid taxonomic type           Bottke W. F. Jr. and Melosh H. J. (1996b) The formation of binary
with the meteorite inventory. In fact, they may tell us about            asteroids and doublet craters. Icarus, 124, 372–391.
asteroid material for which it is unlikely we currently have          Bottke W. F., Nolan M., and Greenberg R. (1994) Velocity distri-
representation among the meteorites, such as very low-den-               butions among colliding asteroids. Icarus, 107, 255–268.
sity carbonaceous material that may not survive passage               Bottke W. F. Jr., Richardson D. C., Michel P., and Love S. G.
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lead to spinoffs in related areas, including improvements to
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our understanding of the formation of the Earth/Moon or                  146, 213–219.
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