The atmospheres of rocky asteroids are unlikely to have ever been anything more than tenuous exospheres. However, it is possible that the densities of radiogenic heavy noble gases might have once been high enough to have implanted observable quantities in the regoliths that became meteorites. For this to have happened, a significant fraction of these species must have been photoionized and accelerated by the electromagnetic fields associated with the solar wind, rather than escaping thermally. Then, some fraction of the photoions would be accelerated into the asteroid's surface. Analytical and numerical results presented here suggest that acceleration of photoions by the solar wind motional field is a significant loss process for Xe on asteroids about 200 km in radius or larger, if the Xe is thermalized by its interactions with the surface. For Ar, photoion acceleration can only become important for asteroids nearly 500 km in radius. Thus photoion acceleration, previously invoked for lunar samples, could be responsible for excess fission-produced Xe found associated with solar wind Xe in howardite meteorites. The lack of such Xe in other types of meteorites may reflect either smaller parent bodies or later times of regolith exposure. Similarly, the failure to observe solar-wind-associated radiogenic 40Ar in meteorites is consistent with the much smaller likelihood that Ar will be photoionized. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1993