The primordial collisional history of Vesta: crater saturation, surface evolution and survival of the basaltic crust

Abstract

This work explores the implications of the Jovian Early Bombardment (JEB) for the evolution of the primordial Vesta, in particular in terms of crater saturation, crustal excavation and surface erosion. Both scenarios assuming the planetesimals having formed in a quiescent or a turbulent nebula were explored and both primordial and collisionally evolved size-frequency distributions were considered. The results obtained indicate that, if the basaltic surface of Vesta were already formed, the JEB would saturate it with craters and could erode it to depths that vary from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometres. In the latter cases, the surface erosion caused by the JEB would be comparable with the thickness of the eucritic and diogenitic layers of Vesta. In the cases where the global surface erosion is limited, however, large impactors, if too abundant, can excavate the whole crust and extract significant quantities of material from the vestan mantle, incompatible with the present understanding of HED meteorites. This appears to be the case if the impacting planetesimals formed in a turbulent nebula and Jupiter migrated by 0.5 AU or more. Globally, the results obtained suggest that the scenarios where the planetesimal formed in a quiescent nebula and Jupiter underwent a modest migration (i.e. up to 0.5 AU) are the most consistent with our understanding of Vesta, even if the cases of planetesimals formed in a turbulent nebula with Jupiter undergoing limited (i.e. about 0.25 AU) or no migration cannot be ruled out. Recent results on the differentiation of the asteroid, however, raised the possibility that Vesta originally possessed a now-lost undifferentiated crust. In this case, the favoured scenarios would be those where the planetesimals formed in a quiescent nebula and Jupiter underwent a more significant migration (i.e. between 0.5 AU and 1 AU).