Landing On an Asteroid Might Cause an Avalanche

coondoggie writes "As if landing on an asteroid wouldn't be dangerous enough, a new microgravity experiment on the forces generated by an asteroid and its make-up suggests landing on one may cause a big avalanche. The rubble and dust covering asteroids and comets can feel changes in what is known as 'force-chains' between particles over much larger distances than on Earth, making these surfaces less stable than previously imagined, said Dr. Ben Rozitis of the Open University, who presented his experiment's findings (abstract) on July 4 at the National Astronomy Meeting."

Comments

Re:Bullshit

[Lunix Nutcase]

Couldn't even make it to the 2nd sentence of the summary?

Empirical results differ

[simonbp]

NEAR-Shoemaker "landed" on Eros perfectly fine. Likewise Hayabusa "landed" on Itokawa perfectly fine. Neither saw any sort of "avalanche".

Re:Empirical results differ

[CreamyG31337]

Eros is not a rubble pile. I hate quoting wikipedia, but "The asteroid 433 Eros, the primary destination of NEAR Shoemaker, was determined to be riven with cracks but otherwise solid. Other asteroids, possibly including Itokawa, have been found to be contact binaries, two major bodies touching, with or without rubble filling the boundary."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubble_pile

But very slowly

[Anonymous Coward]

In microgravity just how fast could that avalanche be?

Less than one millimeter an hour?

The effect would resemble plant growth more than 1/2 a mountain falling on you in a second or two.

Re:so if a mountain is 50% of the objects width..

[ackthpt]

I'm guessing it is about having the dust cover scientifically important parts of the craft, such as lenses and clean sample bins. Also clogging filters or joints could cause issues.

So you just take along a little compressed air and repel the stuff before it gets there. This would be one very, very slow avalanche.