Related papers: Long-term impact risk for (101955) 1999 RQ36
Asteroids smaller than about 100 meters are observed to rotate very fast, with periods often much shorter than the critical limit of 2.2 h. Some of these super-fast rotators can also achieve a very large semi-major axis drift induced by the…
Asteroids have called the attention of researchers around the world. Its chemical and physical composition can give us important information about the formation of our Solar System. In addition, the hypothesis of mining some of these…
The Yarkovsky (orbital drift) and YORP (spin state change) effects play important roles in the dynamical and physical evolution of asteroids. Thermophysical modelling of these observed effects, and of thermal-infrared observations, allows a…
Giant impacts by comets and asteroids have probably had an important influence on terrestrial biological evolution. We know of around 180 high velocity impact craters on the Earth with ages up to 2400Myr and diameters up to 300km. Some…
Asteroid 99942 Apophis will pass near the Earth in April 2029. Expected to miss our planet by a safe margin, that could change if Apophis' path was perturbed by a collision with another asteroid in the interim. Though the statistical chance…
Asteroidal impact threats to the Earth will be predicted a century or more in advance. Changing an asteroid's albedo changes the force of Solar radiation on it, and hence its orbit. Albedo may be changed by applying a thin ($\sim 0.1\,\mu$)…
The age of a young asteroid family can be determined by tracking the orbits of family members backward in time and showing that they converge at some time in the past. Here we consider the Veritas family. We find that the membership of the…
On 2013 February 15 a small asteroid rammed against the atmosphere above the region of Chelyabinsk in Russia, producing the most powerful superbolide since the Tunguska event in 1908. Lacking proper astrometric observations, the pre-impact…
The recent publication by Siraj & Loeb (2021; Nature Scientific Reports 11, 3803) attempts to revive the debate over whether the Chicxulub impactor was a comet or an asteroid. They calculate that ~20% of long-period comets impacting Earth…
The YORP effect is a small thermal-radiation torque experienced by small asteroids, and is considered to be crucial in their physical and dynamical evolution. It is important to understand this effect by providing measurements of YORP for a…
We study the time evolution of the impact probability for synthetic but realistic impacting and close approaching asteroids detected in a simulated all-sky survey. We use the impact probability to calculate the impact warning time as the…
We present an adaptation of the ATPM to simultaneously predict the Yarkovsky and YORP effects in the presence of global self-heating that occurs within the large concavities of irregularly shaped asteroids, which has been neglected or…
Recently discovered asteroid 2024 YR$_4$ has an orbital period of almost exactly 4 years, a descending node located almost exactly 1 au from the Sun, with a perihelion slightly less than that. Its combination of semi-major axis and…
The Yarkovsky effect on real asteroids is complicated to calculate either by analytical or numerical methods, since they are generally irregular in shape. We propose an index to properly characterise the shape of any asteroid, through which…
The orbits of asteroids from the MPC catalogue of May 31, 2020 with absolute magnitudes H < 16m, in the 3:1, 5:2 and 2:1 mean motion resonances (MMRs) with Jupiter were selected. The number of the orbits in the 2:1 MMR is dozens times…
At a mean diameter of ~650 m, the near-Earth asteroid (455213) 2001 OE84 (OE84 for short) has a rapid rotation period of 0.486542+-0.000002 hours, which is uncommon for asteroids larger than ~200 m. We revisited OE84 14 years after it was…
It is widely accepted that a quasi-steady-state flux of minor bodies moving in and out of the co-orbital state with the Earth may exist. Some of these objects are very good candidates for future in situ study due to their favourable…
In August 2002, the near-Earth asteroid 2002 NY40, made its closest approach to the Earth. This provided an opportunity to study a near-Earth asteroid with a variety of instruments. Several of the telescopes at the Maui Space Surveillance…
An asteroid impact is a low probability event with potentially devastating consequences. The Asteroid Risk Mitigation Optimization and Research (ARMOR) software tool calculates whether a colliding asteroid experiences an airburst or surface…
We propose an analytic model for the normal YORP and diurnal Yarkovsky effects experienced by a convex asteroid. Both the YORP torque and the Yarkovsky force are expressed as integrals of a universal function over the surface of an…