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Doomed Worlds. I. No New Evidence for Orbital Decay in a Long-term Survey of 43 Ultrahot Jupiters
Huang, Chelsea X.; Sickafoose, Amanda A.; Jackson, Brian +8 more
Ultrahot Jupiters (UHJs) are likely doomed by tidal forces to undergo orbital decay and eventual disruption by their stars, but the timescale over which this process unfolds is unknown. We present results from a long-term project to monitor UHJ transits. We recovered WASP-12 b's orbital decay rate of ms yr‑1, in agreement with prior wor…
The Dynamical State of the Didymos System before and after the DART Impact
Hamilton, Douglas P.; Tanga, Paolo; Gramigna, Edoardo +50 more
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft impacted Dimorphos, the natural satellite of (65803) Didymos, on 2022 September 26, as a first successful test of kinetic impactor technology for deflecting a potentially hazardous object in space. The experiment resulted in a small change to the dynamical state of the Didymos system consis…
Beyond Point Masses. III. Detecting Haumea's Nonspherical Gravitational Field
Grundy, Will M.; Oldroyd, William J.; Proudfoot, Benjamin C. N. +3 more
The dwarf planet Haumea is one of the most compelling trans-Neptunian objects to study, hosting two small, dynamically interacting satellites, a family of nearby spectrally unique objects, and a ring system. Haumea itself is extremely oblate due to its 3.9 hr rotation period. Understanding the orbits of Haumea's satellites, named Hi'iaka and Namak…
Revealing Callisto's Carbon-rich Surface and CO2 Atmosphere with JWST
de Pater, Imke; Roth, Lorenz; Malaska, Michael J. +18 more
We analyzed spectral cubes of Callisto's leading and trailing hemispheres, collected with the NIRSpec Integrated Field Unit (G395H) on the James Webb Space Telescope. These spatially resolved data show strong 4.25 µm absorption bands resulting from solid-state 12CO2, with the strongest spectral features at low latitudes…
Three-dimensional Atmospheric Dynamics of Jupiter from Ground-based Doppler Imaging Spectroscopy in the Visible
Wong, Michael H.; Izumiura, Hideyuki; Sato, Bun'ei +25 more
We present three-dimensional (3D) maps of Jupiter's atmospheric circulation at cloud-top level from Doppler-imaging data obtained in the visible domain with JIVE, the second node of the JOVIAL network, which is mounted on the Dunn Solar Telescope at Sunspot, New Mexico. We report on 12 nights of observations between 2018 May 4 and May 30, represen…
DART Impact Ejecta Plume Evolution: Implications for Dimorphos
Pajola, M.; Bertini, I.; Cremonese, G. +29 more
The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft impacted the moon Dimorphos of the [65803] Didymos binary system and changed the binary orbit period, demonstrating asteroid deflection by a kinetic impact and indicating that more momentum was transferred to Dimorphos by escaping impact ejecta than was incident with DART. Images of the D…
Constraining Time Variations in Enceladus's Water-vapor Plume with Near-infrared Spectra from Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer
Hedman, M. M.; Bockelée-Morvan, D.; Capaccioni, F. +2 more
Water vapor produces a series of diagnostic emission lines in the near-infrared between 2.60 and 2.75 µm. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on board the Cassini spacecraft detected this emission signal from Enceladus's plume, and so VIMS observations provide information about the variability of the plume's water-vapor conte…
On the Fate of Slow Boulders Ejected after DART Impact on Dimorphos
Moreno, Fernando; Campo Bagatin, Adriano; Tancredi, Gonzalo
On 2022 September 26 23:14 UT, the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft successfully impacted Dimorphos, the secondary component of the binary (65803) Didymos system, demonstrating asteroid orbit deflection for the first time. A large amount of debris, consisting of a wide size–frequency distribution of particulates (from micron-sized …
The New Horizons Extended Mission Target: Arrokoth Search and Discovery
Fabbro, S.; Stern, S. Alan; Weaver, Harold A. +37 more
Following the Pluto flyby of the New Horizons spacecraft, the mission provided a unique opportunity to explore the Kuiper Belt in situ. The possibility existed to fly by a Kuiper Belt object (KBO), as well as to observe additional objects at distances closer than are feasible from Earth-orbit facilities. However, at the time of launch no KBOs were…
Noble Gas Planetology and the Xenon Clouds of Uranus
Zahnle, Kevin
Noble gases provide tracers of cosmic provenance that are accessible to a future Uranus atmospheric probe. Argon and krypton are expected to be well mixed on Uranus with respect to H2 and He, although condensation at the winter pole may be possible. The Ar/H2 and Ar/Kr ratios address whether the materials accreted by Uranus r…