Related papers: First approximation for spacecraft motion relative…

On September 26, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully impacted Dimorphos, the natural satellite of the binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. Numerical simulations of the impact provide a means to…

The equilibrium points of the gravitational potential field of minor celestial bodies, including asteroids, comets, and irregular satellites of planets, are studied. In order to understand better the orbital dynamics of massless particles…

The S-star cluster in the Galactic center allows us to study the physics close to a supermassive black hole, including distinctive dynamical tests of general relativity. Our best estimates for the mass of and the distance to Sgr A* using…

This work develops low-energy spacecraft (SC) trajectories using Venus gravity assists to study asteroids during heliocentric transfer segments between planetary encounters. The study focuses on potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) as…

The rubble pile spin barrier is an upper limit on the rotation rate of asteroids larger than ~200-300 m. Among thousands of asteroids with diameters larger than ~300 m, only a handful of asteroids are known to rotate faster than 2.0 h, all…

ASTROD I is planned as a single spacecraft mission. It will use interferometric and pulse ranging techniques between the spacecraft and ground stations, to make high precision measurements of the parameters that describe the solar system,…

To evaluate the feasibility of measuring differences in bulk composition among carbonaceous meteorite parent bodies from an asteroid or comet orbiter, we present the results of a performance simulation of an orbital gamma-ray spectroscopy…

The observed near-Earth asteroid population contains very few objects with small perihelion distances, say, q<=0.2 au. NEAs that currently have orbits with larger q might be hiding a past evolution during which they have approached closer…

The Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt (EMA) will study the ultra-red asteroid (269)~Justitia. In this work, we present the first detailed investigation of Justitia's surface dynamics using the newly developed 3-D polyhedral shape model…

Until recently, most asteroids were thought to be solid bodies whose shapes were determined largely by collisions with other asteroids. It now seems that many asteroids are little more than rubble piles, held together by self-gravity; this…

Periodic orbits are important objects of discrete dynamical systems, but finding them is not always easy. We present a self-contained introductory account, aimed at non-experts, to prove their existence and study their stability using the…

Earth-based radar observations of the rotational dynamics of Mercury (Margot et al. 2012) combined with the determination of its gravity field by MESSENGER (Smith et al. 2012) give clues on the internal structure of Mercury, in particular…

Close to the Roche radius of a white dwarf (WD), an asteroid on a circular orbit sheds material that then adopts a very similar orbit. Observations of the resulting debris show a periodic behavior and changes in flux on short timescales,…

We assess the ability of a solid ring to model a global perturbation induced by several thousands of main-belt asteroids. The ring is first studied in an analytical framework that provides an estimate of all the ring's parameters excepting…

Aims. We aim to characterize the properties of the inner companion of the S-type AGB star pi1 Gru and to identify plausible future evolutionary scenarios for this triple system. Methods. We observed pi1 Gru with ALMA and VLT/SPHERE. In…

Surface shedding of an asteroid is a failure mode where surface materials fly off due to strong centrifugal forces beyond the critical spin period, while the internal structure does not deform significantly. This paper proposes a possible…

Many asteroids are rubble piles with irregular shapes. While the irregular shapes of large asteroids may be attributed to collisional events, those of small asteroids may result from not only impact events but also rotationally induced…

The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is a planetary defense-driven test of a kinetic impactor on Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid 65803 Didymos. DART will intercept Dimorphos at a relative speed of…

We present a physical model and spin-state analysis of the potentially hazardous asteroid (23187) 2000 PN9. As part of a long-term campaign to make direct detections of the YORP effect, we collected optical lightcurves of the asteroid…

We present a procedure for determination of positions and orbital elements, and associated uncertainties, of outer Solar System planets. The orbit-fitting procedure is greatly streamlined compared to traditional methods because acceleration…