Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most diagnosed cancer worldwide and the second most common cause of cancer death. About 20% of patients diagnosed with rectal cancer present with emergency symptoms. Typical symptoms include acute bleeding, obstruction, and perforation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpacecraft observations revealed that rocks on carbonaceous asteroids, which constitute the most numerous class by composition, can develop millimeter-to-meter-scale fractures due to thermal stresses. However, signatures of this process on the second-most populous group of asteroids, the S-complex, have been poorly constrained. Here, we report observations of boulders' fractures on Dimorphos, which is the moonlet of the S-complex asteroid (65803) Didymos, the target of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) planetary defense mission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImages collected during NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission provide the first resolved views of the Didymos binary asteroid system. These images reveal that the primary asteroid, Didymos, is flattened and has plausible undulations along its equatorial perimeter. At high elevations, its surface is rough and contains large boulders and craters; at low elevations its surface is smooth and possesses fewer large boulders and craters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAsteroids smaller than 10 km are thought to be rubble piles formed from the reaccumulation of fragments produced in the catastrophic disruption of parent bodies. Ground-based observations reveal that some of these asteroids are today binary systems, in which a smaller secondary orbits a larger primary asteroid. However, how these asteroids became binary systems remains unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe bearing capacity - the ability of a surface to support applied loads - is an important parameter for understanding and predicting the response of a surface. Previous work has inferred the bearing capacity and trafficability of specific regions of the Moon using orbital imagery and measurements of the boulder tracks visible on its surface. Here, we estimate the bearing capacity of the surface of an asteroid for the first time using DART/DRACO images of suspected boulder tracks on the surface of asteroid (65803) Didymos.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART, NASA) spacecraft revealed that the primary of the (65803) Didymos near-Earth asteroid (NEA) binary system is not exactly the expected spinning top shape observed for other km-size asteroids. Ground based radar observations predicted that such shape was compatible with the uncertainty along the direction of the asteroid spin axis. Indeed, Didymos shows crater and landslide features, and evidence for boulder motion at low equatorial latitudes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) had an impact with Dimorphos (a satellite of the asteroid Didymos) on 26 September 2022. Ground-based observations showed that the Didymos system brightened by a factor of 8.3 after the impact because of ejecta, returning to the pre-impact brightness 23.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission performed a kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, at 23:14 UTC on 26 September 2022 as a planetary defence test. DART was the first hypervelocity impact experiment on an asteroid at size and velocity scales relevant to planetary defence, intended to validate kinetic impact as a means of asteroid deflection. Here we report a determination of the momentum transferred to an asteroid by kinetic impact.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSome active asteroids have been proposed to be formed as a result of impact events. Because active asteroids are generally discovered by chance only after their tails have fully formed, the process of how impact ejecta evolve into a tail has, to our knowledge, not been directly observed. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission of NASA, in addition to having successfully changed the orbital period of Dimorphos, demonstrated the activation process of an asteroid resulting from an impact under precisely known conditions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth for at least the next century, the catalogue of near-Earth asteroids is incomplete for objects whose impacts would produce regional devastation. Several approaches have been proposed to potentially prevent an asteroid impact with Earth by deflecting or disrupting an asteroid. A test of kinetic impact technology was identified as the highest-priority space mission related to asteroid mitigation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCarbonaceous asteroids, such as (101955) Bennu, preserve material from the early Solar System, including volatile compounds and organic molecules. We report spacecraft imaging and spectral data collected during and after retrieval of a sample from Bennu's surface. The sampling event mobilized rocks and dust into a debris plume, excavating a 9-meter-long elliptical crater.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWind-formed features are abundant in Oxia Planum (Mars), the landing site of the 2022 ExoMars mission, which shows geological evidence for a past wet environment. Studies of aeolian bedforms at the landing site were focused on assessing the risk for rover trafficability, however their potential in recording climatic fluctuations has not been explored. Here we show that the landing site experienced multiple climatic changes in the Amazonian, which are recorded by an intriguing set of ridges that we interpret as Periodic Bedrock Ridges (PBRs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn asteroid's history is determined in large part by its strength against collisions with other objects (impact strength). Laboratory experiments on centimetre-scale meteorites have been extrapolated and buttressed with numerical simulations to derive the impact strength at the asteroid scale. In situ evidence of impacts on boulders on airless planetary bodies has come from Apollo lunar samples and images of the asteroid (25143) Itokawa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVisible-wavelength color and reflectance provide information about the geologic history of planetary surfaces. Here we present multispectral images (0.44 to 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRock breakdown due to diurnal thermal cycling has been hypothesized to drive boulder degradation and regolith production on airless bodies. Numerous studies have invoked its importance in driving landscape evolution, yet morphological features produced by thermal fracture processes have never been definitively observed on an airless body, or any surface where other weathering mechanisms may be ruled out. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission provides an opportunity to search for evidence of thermal breakdown and assess its significance on asteroid surfaces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe presence of liquid water at the base of the martian polar caps has long been suspected but not observed. We surveyed the Planum Australe region using the MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) instrument, a low-frequency radar on the Mars Express spacecraft. Radar profiles collected between May 2012 and December 2015 contain evidence of liquid water trapped below the ice of the South Polar Layered Deposits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Rosetta spacecraft spent ~2 years orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, most of it at distances that allowed surface characterization and monitoring at submeter scales. From December 2014 to June 2016, numerous localized changes were observed, which we attribute to cometary-specific weathering, erosion, and transient events driven by exposure to sunlight and other processes. While the localized changes suggest compositional or physical heterogeneity, their scale has not resulted in substantial alterations to the comet's landscape.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Rosetta spacecraft has investigated comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from large heliocentric distances to its perihelion passage and beyond. We trace the seasonal and diurnal evolution of the colors of the 67P nucleus, finding changes driven by sublimation and recondensation of water ice. The whole nucleus became relatively bluer near perihelion, as increasing activity removed the surface dust, implying that water ice is widespread underneath the surface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe factors shaping cometary nuclei are still largely unknown, but could be the result of concurrent effects of evolutionary and primordial processes. The peculiar bilobed shape of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may be the result of the fusion of two objects that were once separate or the result of a localized excavation by outgassing at the interface between the two lobes. Here we report that the comet's major lobe is enveloped by a nearly continuous set of strata, up to 650 metres thick, which are independent of an analogous stratified envelope on the minor lobe.
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