Using the youngest asteroid clusters to constrain the space weathering and gardening rate on S-complex asteroids

We have extended our earlier work on space weathering of the youngest S-complex asteroid families to include results from asteroid clusters with ages <10(6) years and to newly identified asteroid pairs with ages <5 x 10(5) years. We have identified three S-complex asteroid clusters amongst the set of clusters with ages in the range 10(5-6) years-(1270) Datura, (21509) Lucascavin and (16598) 1992 YC2. The average color of the objects in these clusters agrees with the color predicted by the space weathering model of Willman et al. (Willman, M., Jedicke, R., Nesvorny, D., Moskovitz, N., Ivezic, Z., Fevig, R. [2008]. Icarus 195, 663-673). SDSS five-filter photometry of the members of the very young asteroid pairs with ages <10(5) years was used to determine their taxonomic classification. Their types are consistent with the background population near each object. The average color of the S-complex pairs is PC1 = 0.49 +/- 0.03, over 5 sigma redder than predicted by Willman et al. (Willman, M., Jedicke, R., Nesvorny, D., Moskovitz, N., Ivezic, Z., Fevig, R. [2008]. Icarus 195, 663-673). This may indicate that the most likely pair formation mechanism is a gentle separation due to YORP spin-up leaving much of the aged and reddened surface undisturbed. If this is the case then our color measurement allows us to set an upper limit of similar to 64% on the amount of surface disturbed in the separation process. Using pre-existing color data and our new results for the youngest S-complex asteroid clusters we have extended our space weather model to explicitly include the effects of regolith gardening and fit separate weathering and gardening characteristic time scales of tau(w) = 960 +/- 160 Myr and tau(g) = 2000 +/- 290 Myr respectively. The first principal component color for fresh S-complex material is PC1 = 0.37 +/- 0.01 while the maximum amount of local reddening is Delta PC1 = 0.33 +/- 0.06. Our first-ever determination of the gardening time is in stark contrast to our calculated gardening time of tau(g) similar to 270 Myr based on main belt impact rates and reasonable assumptions about crater and ejects blanket sizes. A possible resolution for the discrepancy is through a 'honeycomb' mechanism in which the surface regolith structure absorbs small impactors without producing significant ejecta. This mechanism could also account for the paucity of small craters on (433) Eros. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.