Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
4406778 | Chemie der Erde - Geochemistry | 2016 | 15 Pages |
Considerable progress has been made in the last few years in determining asteroid chemistries and mineralogies. Dedicated spacecraft missions have allowed mineralogical predictions based on ground-based data to be confirmed or refuted. These missions include NEAR-Shoemaker to (253) Mathilde and (433) Eros, Hayabusa to (25143) Itokawa, and Dawn to (4) Vesta and (1) Ceres, the upcoming Hayabusa2 to (162173) Ryugu, and the upcoming OSIRIS-Rex to (101955) Bennu. All of these missions have or will make significant advances that could not have been made through just Earth-based observations. The recovery of Almahata Sitta from 2008 TC3 was a rare opportunity to recover meteorite samples from a spectrally observed body from a naturally occurring event. This review will discuss the importance of spacecraft missions to asteroids.