  The surface of airless bodies like asteroids in the Solar System are known to
be affected by space weathering. Experiments simulating space weathering are
essential for studying the effects of this process on meteorite samples, but
the problem is that the time spent to reproduce space weathering in these
experiments is billions of times shorter than the actual phenomenon. In
December 2010, the T-type asteroid 596 Scheila underwent a collision with a
few-tens-of-meters impactor. A decade later, there is an opportunity to study
how the surface layer of this asteroid is being altered by space weathering
after the impact. To do so, we performed visible spectrophotometric and
near-infrared spectroscopic observations of 596 Scheila. The acquired spectrum
is consistent with those observed shortly after the 2010 impact event within
the observational uncertainty range. This indicates that the surface color of
dark asteroids is not noticeably changed by space weathering over a 10-year
period. This study is the first to investigate color changes due to space
weathering on an actual asteroid surface in the Solar System. Considering that
fresh layers are regularly created on asteroid surfaces by collisions, we
suggest a genetic link between D/T-type and dark (low albedo) X-complex
asteroids and very red objects such as 269 Justitia, 732 Tjilaki (and 203
Pompeja). New observations show that 203 Pompeja has a X-type-like surface,
with some local surface areas exhibiting a very red spectrum.
