Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2016
Proposing a diagram which shows the variation in asteroidal failure as a function of a spin period, later called the failure mode diagram, this paper considers the failure modes and conditions of asteroid (25143) Itokawa. This diagram is useful to describe when and where failure occurs in an asteroid. Assuming that Itokawa is homogeneous, we use a plastic finite element code to obtain the diagram for this object. The results show that if the bulk cohesive strength is less than 0.1 Pa, Itokawa experiences compressional failure on the neck surface at the current spin period 12.1 hours. At a spin period shorter than 4.5 hours, tension across the neck causes this asteroid to split into two components. It is also found that if the breakup spin period is longer than 5.2 hours, their motion is bounded. This implies that once Itokawa splits, the components may escape from one another.