Related papers: Easily Retrievable Objects among the NEO Populatio…
Asteroid mining offers the possibility to revolutionize supply of resources vital for human civilization. Preliminary analysis suggests that Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) contain enough volatile and high value minerals to make the mining…
One-opposition near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are growing in number, and they must be recovered to prevent loss and mismatch risk, and to improve their orbits, as they are likely to be too faint for detection in shallow surveys at future…
Context. Asteroids with semi-major axes very close to that of a host planet can avoid node crossings when their nodal points are at perihelion and at aphelion. This layout protects the asteroids from close encounters, and eventual…
Centaurs are objects whose orbits are found between those of the giant planets. They are supposed to originate mainly from the TransNeptunian objects, and they are among the sources of NearEarth Objects.TransNeptunian Objects (TNOs) cross…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are fragments of remnant primitive bodies that date from the era of Solar System formation. At present, the physical properties and origins of NEOs are poorly understood. We have measured thermal emission from…
Determining the size and orbital distribution of the population of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is the focus of intense research, with the most recent models converging to a population of approximately $1000$ NEAs larger than 1 km and up to…
Since July 2014, the ESA Gaia mission has been surveying the entire sky down to magnitude 20.7 in the visible. In addition to the millions of stars, thousands of Solar System Objects (SSOs) are observed daily. By comparing their positions…
We characterize mission profiles for human expeditions to near-Earth asteroids, Venus, and Mars. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are the closest destinations beyond cis-lunar space and present a compelling target with capabilities already under…
The number of asteroids with accurately determined orbits increases fast. The catalogs of asteroid physical observations have also increased, although the number of objects is still smaller than in the orbital catalogs. We developed a new…
The observation of small bodies in the Space Environment is an ongoing important task in astronomy. While nowadays new objects are mostly detected in larger sky surveys, several follow-up observations are usually needed for each object to…
The Euphrosyne asteroid family is uniquely situated at high inclination in the outer Main Belt, bisected by the nu_6 secular resonance. This large, low albedo family may thus be an important contributor to specific subpopulations of the…
We introduce a new computational technique for searching for faint moving sources in astronomical images. Starting from a maximum likelihood estimate for the probability of the detection of a source within a series of images, we develop a…
We have used Minor Planet Center data and tools to explore the discovery circumstances and properties of the currently known population of over 10,000 NEAs, and to quantify the challenges for follow-up from ground-based telescopes. The…
International and U.S. strategies and protocols have identified the need to develop rapid-response spacecraft reconnaissance capabilities as a priority to advance planetary defense readiness. A space-based reconnaissance response is…
The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) proposes to retrieve a near-Earth asteroid and position it in a lunar distant retrograde orbit (DRO) for later study, crewed exploration, and ultimately resource exploitation. During the Caltech Space…
The recently discovered population of interstellar objects presents us with the opportunity to characterize material from extrasolar planetary and stellar systems up close. The forthcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space…
We integrated the orbital evolution of 30,000 Jupiter-family comets, 1300 resonant asteroids, and 7000 asteroidal, trans-Neptunian, and cometary dust particles. For initial orbital elements of bodies close to those of Comets 2P, 10P, 44P,…
2022 OB$_5$ is a sub-10-metre Apollo-type near-Earth asteroid whose orbital configuration placed it among the most dynamically accessible small bodies in near-Earth space, motivating its selection as the target of the first commercial…
While most near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are thought to originate from the main belt, recent discoveries have suggested the existence of a lunar-derived NEA population, such as the asteroids Kamo'oalewa and 2024 PT5. These objects may hold…
The continuing monitoring and surveying of the nearby space to detect Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are essential because of the threats that this kind of objects impose on the future of our planet. We need more…