An interpretation of potential catastrophic collision at P/2010 A2

Solar System has evolved with numerous collisions among asteroids. Ancient catastrophic collisions of large parent bodies led the formation of asteroid families and relevant dustband structures up to the present day, and it would be interesting to address a question - "what happens if an asteroid collides with another asteroid?" Recent discoveries of "active asteroids" in the main-belt have attracted interest for their potential to witness a catastrophic collision in the current Solar System. So far, however, there is no direct evidence for catastrophic collision on active asteroids while several objects have been confirmed for other mechanisms (e.g., 596 Scheila for impact cratering, P/2013 R3 and P/2013 P5 for rotational breakup). The most potential candidate for catastrophic collision could be a sub-km active asteroid P/2010 A2, which is still controversial on its driving mechanism, but if confirmed, would have made P/2010 A2 the unique example of catastrophic collision on the current main asteroid belt. In this presentation, we revisit all of archival data of P/2010 A2 in a combination with our own observation using Subaru/Suprime-Cam on 2011 June, where we have a great benefit of a large orbital coverage. We found a grain size dependence of dust ejection velocity from P/2010 A2 (a power-law size distribution with an index of k~ -1/10), which is favorable to a catastrophic disruption scenario in agreement with laboratory impact experiments. At this conference, we plan to provide our understanding of the morphology of P/2010 A2 through a perspective of catastrophic collision.