Inelastic Dissipation in Tumbling Asteroids and Comets

Asteroids and comets dissipate energy when they rotate about the axis different from the axis of the maximal moment of inertia. We show that the most efficient internal relaxation happens at the double frequency of body’s tumbling. Therefore the earlier estimates that ignore double frequency input underestimate the internal relaxation in asteroids and comets. We show that the Earth seismological data may poorly represent acoustic properties of asteroids and comet as internal relaxation increases in the presence of moisture. At the same time owing to non-linearlity of inelastic relaxation small angle nutations can persist for very long time spans. Subject headings: comets, asteroids: dynamics, internal relaxation