Associate Professor

　Graduate School of Science　
　Faculty of Science

• e-mail：minami.yasui(at)pearl.kobe-u.ac.jp
• Office: Science and Technology Bldg 3, Room 102
• Mailing address:
  Department of Planetology, Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, 1-1, Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe-shi, Hyogo 657-8501, JAPAN
• Experimental Planetary Science Laboratory URL

Research Interests:

　Icy bodies in the solar system, e.g., icy satellites, comets, and KBOs, are composed of ices, rocks, organic matters and metal. I’m interested in the thermal evolutions and the formation processes of tectonic features (glaciers, faults, etc.) observed on the surfaces of icy bodies. To clarify them, I perform deformation experiment of water ice mixed with silica powder simulating planetary dusts and examine the compression strength, viscosity and brittle failure strength.
   Furthermore, I’m interested in the collisional phenomena and the cratering processes of planetesimals, asteroids and small icy satellites. I perform impact experiments by using porous materials (snow, gypsum, etc.) simulating these porous bodies and the materials having multiple components (ice-rock mixtures, gypsum-silica powder mixtures, etc.) to study the impact strength and the ejecta velocity.

Recent Publications:　

• Nakamura, M., Yasui, M. (Corresponding author), Arakawa, M., “High-velocity oblique impact experiments on ice and snow spheres: Implications for the collisional evolution of icy planetesimals at different thermal evolution stages”, Icarus 413, #116010, 2024.
• Yasui, M., Arakawa, M., Okawa, H., Hasegawa, S., “Cratering experiments on granular targets with a variety of particle sizes: Implications for craters on rubble-pile asteroids”, J. Geophys. Res. -Planets 127,e2021JE007172, 2022.
• Okawa, H., Arakawa, M., Yasui, M., Hasegawa, S., Toda, M., Shirai, K., Yamamoto, Y.,”Effect of boulder size on ejecta velocity scaling law for cratering and its implication for formation of tiny asteroids”, Icarus 387, #115212, 2022.
• Arakawa, M., Okazaki, M., Nakamura, M., Jutzi, M., Yasui, M., and Hasegawa, S., “Dispersion and shattering strength of rocky and frozen planetesimals studied by laboratory experiments and numerical simulations”, Icarus 373, 114777, 2022.
• Yasui, M., Tazawa, T., Hashimoto, R., Arakawa, M., Ogawa, K., “Impacts may provide heat for aqueous alteration and organic solid formation on asteroid parent bodies”, Commun. Earth Environ. 2, 95, 2021.

Academic Associations:　

• Japanese Society for Planetary Science (Japanese)
• Japanese Society of Snow and Ice
• Japan Geoscience Union
• American Geophysical Union

UPDATE: 30/Apr./2025