9318674 Gaffey Investigations of Asteroid Families and Shapes. Most asteroids are fragments of collisionally disrupted planetesimals, and many asteroid families are such disrupted bodies in an early stage of dispersal. Investigations of individual parent body fragments and of asteroid families provide information on the early inner Solar System transient thermal events which heated their parent bodies, the internal structures of their parent planetesimals resulting from planetary differentiation, and the large scale collisions which fragmented them. Dr. Gaffey will conduct observations to investigate asteroid shapes and asteroid families. Mineralogic compositions of asteroid family members will be determined from spectra to test the genetic models of asteroid families, to identify interlopers within families, to test the reality of proposed families with small memberships, to constrain the lifetimes of asteroid families, and to evaluate the internal structure of the parent planetesimals of interesting and important families.
