Brian A. Keeney

The main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson (DJ) is a likely member of the Erigone asteroid family. This implies that DJ is a fragment of a larger parent body that was destroyed in a collision about 155 million years ago. We report observations taken during a flyby of DJ by the Lucy spacecraft. We found that DJ is composed of two heavily cratered lobes, connected by a smoother neck, with overall dimensions 8.8 kilometers (km) by 4.4 km by 3.1 km. The crater density is consistent with the Erigone family’s age, except for craters <0.4 km, which have been preferentially erased. DJ rotates slowly in a tumbling state, likely owing to spin-down by radiative forces. Surface spectra show iron-bearing phyllosilicates, indicating moderate aqueous evolution on the parent body.

We present results from an occultation of a star by the asteroid (269) Justitia on 2023 August 31 UT using a deployment of 34 stations. Of the deployed stations, 29 were successful in collecting useful data and 19 recorded a positive occultation event. All stations were regularly spaced 2.45 km apart in the cross-track direction to cover ±3σ of the ephemeris uncertainty with a planning diameter of 59 km. We find that the shape of Justitia is irregular, with large-scale facets and a circular-equivalent radius in the range of 28.5–28.9 km. The inferred albedo is p _V = 0.072 ± 0.007 using a rotation-corrected absolute magnitude of H _V = 9.72. Astrometry from the occultation is provided.

We report on a study of the mounds that dominate the appearance of Kuiper Belt Object (486958) Arrokoth's larger lobe, named Wenu. We compare the geological context of these mounds and measure and intercompare their shapes, sizes/orientations, reflectance, and colors. We find the mounds are broadly self-similar in many respects and interpret them as the original building blocks of Arrokoth. It remains unclear why these building blocks are so similar in size—and this represents a new constraint and challenge for solar system formation models. We then discuss the implications of this interpretation.

Sputnik Planitia, Pluto’s gigantic, volatile ice glacier, hosts numerous scientific mysteries, including the presence of thousands of elongated pit structures. We examine various attributes of these pit structures in New Horizons data sets, revealing their length, aspect ratio, and orientation properties; we also study their reflectivities, colors, and compositions, and compare these attributes to some other relevant regions on Pluto. We then comment on origin mechanisms of the pits and also the fate of the missing volatiles represented by the pits on Sputnik Planitia. From a sample of 317 pits, we find typical length/width ratios of 2–4, with their major axis preferentially oriented approximately north–south. We also find that the floors of large pits in our sample have similar single-scattering albedos and colors to dark material on crater rims and floors (i.e., possible subsurface windows) in Burney basin. We also find that the base of the three pits in our sample, large enough to study with LEISA IR spectroscopy, display both CH₄ and N₂ absorption features, as do the dark regions in crater windows in Burney basin. Evidence for a sublimation erosion origin for the pits is supported over both the explosion/ejecta venting and structural collapse alternatives. Finally, we find that the mass lost by the pits on Sputnik Planitia most likely lies condensed elsewhere, on Pluto’s surface, relocated there by volatile transport as opposed to removal by escape to space or photochemical conversion.

We present observations of five stellar occultations for (11351) Leucus and reports from two efforts on (21900) Orus. Both objects are prime mission candidate targets for the Lucy Discovery mission. Combined results for Leucus indicate a very dark surface with p _V = 0.037 ± 0.001, which is derived from the average of the multichord occultations. Our estimate of the triaxial ellipsoidal shape is for axial diameters of 63.8 × 36.6 × 29.6 km assuming that the spin pole is normal to the line of sight. The actual shape of the object is only roughly elliptical in profile at each epoch. Significant topography is seen with horizontal scales up to 30 km and vertical scales up to 5 km. The most significant feature is a large depression on the southern end of the object as seen from a terrestrial viewpoint. For this work we developed a method to correct for differential refraction, accounting for the difference in color between the target object and the reference stars for astrometry derived from ground-based images.

We present the first measurements of Charon’s far-ultraviolet (FUV) surface reflectance, obtained by the Alice spectrograph on New Horizons. We find no measurable flux shortward of 1650 Å, and Charon’s geometric albedo is σ) at 1600 Å. From 1650 to 1725 Å, Charon’s geometric albedo increases to 0.166 ± 0.068 and remains nearly constant until 1850 Å. As this spectral shape is characteristic of H₂O ice absorption, Charon is the first Kuiper Belt object with a H₂O ice surface to be detected in the FUV. Charon’s geometric albedo is ∼3.7 times lower than Enceladus’s at these wavelengths but has a very similar spectral shape. We attribute this to similarities in their surface compositions and the difference in absolute reflectivity to a high concentration or more-absorbing contaminants on Charon’s surface. Finally, we find that Charon has different solar phase behavior in the FUV than Enceladus, Mimas, Tethys, and Dione, with a stronger opposition surge than Enceladus and a shallower decline at intermediate solar phase angles than any of these Saturnian satellites.

The Alice ultraviolet spectrograph on board the Rosetta orbiter provided the first near-nucleus ultraviolet observations of a cometary coma from arrival at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 August through 2016 September. The characterization of atomic and molecular emissions in the coma revealed the unexpected contribution of dissociative electron impact emission at large heliocentric distances and during some outbursts. This mechanism also proved useful for compositional analysis, and Alice observed many cases that suggested elevated levels of the supervolatile O₂, identifiable in part to their emissions resulting from dissociative electron impact. In this paper, we present the first two-dimensional UV maps constructed from Alice observations of atomic emission from 67P during an increase in cometary activity on 2015 November 7–8. Comparisons to observations of the background coma and an earlier collimated jet are used to describe possible changes to the near-nucleus coma and plasma. To verify the mapping method and place the Alice observations in context, comparisons to images derived from the MIRO and VIRTIS-H instruments are made. The spectra and maps we present show an increase in dissociative electron impact emission and an O₂/H₂O ratio of ∼0.3 for the activity; these characteristics have been previously identified with cometary outbursts seen in Alice data. Further, UV maps following the increases in activity show the spatial extent and emission variation experienced by the near-nucleus coma, informing future UV observations of comets that lack the same spatial resolution.

Cometary outbursts offer a valuable window into the composition of comet nuclei with their forceful ejection of dust and volatiles in explosive events, revealing the interior components of the comet. Understanding how different types of outbursts influence the dust properties and volatile abundances, to better interpret what signatures can be attributed to primordial composition and what features are the result of processing, is an important task best undertaken with a multi-instrument approach. The European Space Agency Rosetta mission to 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko carried a suite of instruments capable of carrying out this task in the near-nucleus coma with unprecedented spatial and spectral resolution. In this work, we discuss two outbursts that occurred 2015 November 7 and were observed by three instruments on board: the Alice ultraviolet spectrograph, the Visual Infrared and Thermal Imaging Spectrometer, and the Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System. Together, the observations show that mixed gas and dust outbursts can have different spectral signatures representative of their initiating mechanisms, with the first outburst showing indicators of a cliff collapse origin and the second more representative of fresh volatiles being exposed via a deepening fracture. This analysis opens up the possibility of remote spectral classification of cometary outbursts with future work.

One of the most striking and curious features of the small Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), Arrokoth, explored by New Horizons is the bright, annular neck it exhibits at the junction between its two lobes. Here we summarize past reported findings regarding the properties of this feature and then report new results regarding its dimensions, reflectivity and color, shape profile, and lack of identifiable craters. We conclude by enumerating possible origin scenarios for this unusual feature. New results include a new estimated measurement of the observed neck area of 8 ± 1.5 km², a total neck surface area of 32 km², a 12.5:1 ratio of circumference to height, a normal reflectance histogram of the observed neck, and the fact that no significant (i.e., >2σ) neck color units were identified, meaning the neck’s color is generally spatially uniform at the 1.5 km pixel⁻¹ scale of the best color images. Although several origin hypotheses for the bright material in the neck are briefly discussed, none can be conclusively demonstrated to be the actual origin mechanism at this time; some future tests are identified.

The Alice UV spectrograph aboard NASA's New Horizons mission is sensitive to MeV electrons that penetrate the instrument's thin aluminum housing and interact with its microchannel plate detector. We have searched for penetrating electrons at heliocentric distance of 2-45 AU, finding no evidence of discrete events outside of the Jovian magnetosphere. However, we do find a gradual long-term increase in the Alice instrument's global dark count rate at a rate of ~1.5% per year, which may be caused by a heightened gamma-ray background from aging of the spacecraft's radioisotope thermoelectric generator fuel. If this hypothesis is correct, then the Alice instrument's global dark count rate should flatten and then decrease over the next 5-10 years.