Asteroids as the parent bodies of meteorites: compositional differences and size-dependent transport mechanisms

Asteroids that come close to the Earth´s orbit (near-Earth asteroids, or NEAs) are targets of different sample-return space missions, providing us with material from their surfaces. Besides, we can also analyze the composition of meteorites in the laboratory, and run dynamical models that give us information about the source regions of NEAs and, consequently, the meteorites. By means of mineralogical analysis of their reflectance spectra, and considering several effects that may alter their surface composition (space weathering), we combine the obtained results with dynamics and size-dependent transport mechanisms, in order to better undersand the connection between these two populations.