Minimum energy asteroid reconfigurations and catastrophic disruptions

Dramatic alteration of an asteroidʹs morphology need not involve high energy impacts between bodies. Simple sunlight shining on an asteroid can, through the YORP effect, cause it to undergo dramatic reconfigurations, fission into a binary asteroid or, in some cases, even undergo a catastrophic disruption with the asteroid losing a large fraction of its initial mass. This paper discusses the system level constraints and conditions for these reconfigurations to occur for a body modeled as a collection of rigid bodies as its spin rate changes.