Related papers: Mitigating potentially hazardous asteroid impacts …
Orbital debris is a nonlinear control problem in a stratified orbital environment, not a static inventory. This paper develops a reduced-order shell-and-size framework that connects collision-rate scaling, fragment-production gain, natural…
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…
Asteroid (99942) Apophis' close approach in 2029 will be one of the most significant small-body encounter events in the near future and offers a good opportunity for in situ exploration to determine the asteroid's surface properties and…
Many asteroids show indications they have undergone impacts with meteoroid particles having radii between 0.01 m and 1 m. During such impacts, small dust grains will be ejected at the impact site. The possibility of these dust grains (with…
Planetary debris is observed in the atmospheres of over 1,000 white dwarfs, and two white dwarfs are now observed to contain orbiting minor planets. Exoasteroids and planetary core fragments achieve orbits close to the white dwarf through…
We present a series of numerical simulations using a shock physics smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code, investigating energetic impacts on small celestial bodies characterised by diverse internal structures, ranging from weak and…
We define a set of procedures to numerically study the fate of ejecta produced by the impact of an artificial projectile with the aim of deflecting an asteroid. Here we develop a simplified, idealized model of impact conditions that can be…
The region occupied by the Hungaria asteroids has a high dynamical complexity. In this paper, we analyse the main dynamic structures and their influence on the known asteroids through the construction of maps of initial conditions. We…
Large potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) are capable of causing a global catastrophe in the event of a planetary collision. Thus, rapid assessment of such an object's physical characteristics is crucial for determining its potential…
We carry out a systematic exploration of the effect of pre-impact rotation on the outcomes of low-speed collisions between planetesimals modeled as gravitational aggregates. We use pkdgrav, a cosmology code adapted to collisional problems…
Remote measurements and in-situ observations confirm the idea that asteroids up to few hundreds of meters in size might be rubble piles. The dynamics of these objects can be studied using N-body simulations of gravitational aggregation. We…
We provide a fast method for computing constraints on impactor pre-impact orbits, applying this to the late giant impacts in the Solar System. These constraints can be used to make quick, broad comparisons of different collision scenarios,…
The catalog of km-sized near-Earth objects (NEOs) is nearly complete. Typical impact monitoring analyses search for possible impacts over the next 100 years and none of the km-sized objects represent an impact threat over that time…
Many asteroids that make close encounters with terrestrial planets are in a binary configuration. Here we calculate the relevant encounter timescales and investigate the effects of encounters on a binary's mutual orbit. We use a combination…
Potentially impacting asteroids were analysed for their impact risk on the Earth. To this end, the Asteroid Risk Mitigation Optimization and Research (ARMOR) tool is currently being developed. The tool's modules are described and their…
The computation of the Minimum Orbital Intersection Distance (MOID) is an old, but increasingly relevant problem. Fast and precise methods for MOID computation are needed to select potentially hazardous asteroids from a large catalogue. The…
We investigate the qualitative characteristics of a test particle attracted to an irregular elongated body, modeled as a non-homogeneous straight segment with a variable linear density. By deriving the potential function in closed form, we…
Fifteen orbital clusters (associations) were identified among ~20000 near Earth asteroids (NEAs). All associations were found with a high statistical reliability using a single linkage cluster analysis algorithm and three orbital similarity…
Minor planets 887 Alinda and 2062 Aten are typical near Earth asteroids (NEA). Our previous researches show their possible origin in catastrophic collision near Earth orbit. It is determine the target of present research -- to investigate…
The discovery of binary and triple asteroids in addition to the execution of space missions to minor celestial bodies in the past several years have focused increasing attention on periodic orbits around irregular-shaped celestial bodies.…