Asteroid families are groupings of asteroids in orbital element space that formed from a single parent body at some point in the past. The themis family has attracted particular interest in recent…

This federal contract award, identified as 80NSSC17K0723, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), a non-profit research organization located in Tucson, Arizona. The contract, valued at $293,465.74, is for a research grant to study the distribution and thermal evolution of ice-bearing objects from the Themis asteroid family within the main asteroid belt and near-Earth object population.

The research aims to further understand the composition and dynamics of the Themis family, which has shown evidence of containing main-belt comets and surface ice on some of its larger members. The findings from this study, which will combine dynamical modeling with thermal analysis, are expected to provide insights into how ice-rich asteroids might be transported throughout the solar system. This contract was awarded without any set-aside designation, reflecting PSI's demonstrated capabilities in planetary science research supported by NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Asteroid families are groupings of asteroids in orbital element space that formed from a single parent body at some point in the past. The themis family has attracted particular interest in recent years. Three currently-known main-belt comets (mbcs), whose activity may be driven by the sublimation of volatile ICE, are themis family members. Detections of surface ICE on two large members of the family have also been reported. Since asteroid family members are believed to be compositionally similar, these findings indicate that ICE could be widespread within the family. We seek to understand how ICE-bearing objects from the themis family might be distributed and transported throughout the main belt and to the near-earth object population. These dynamical studies will then be coupled with theoretical thermal modeling to understand the fate of ICE in these objects. Two of the mbcs in the themis family belong to young (