Related papers: Threat Characterization: Trajectory Dynamics
An asteroid family is typically formed when a larger parent body undergoes a catastrophic collisional disruption, and as such family members are expected to show physical properties that closely trace the composition and mineralogical…
The question of whether to attempt deflections during planetary defence emergencies has been subject to considerable decision-making analysis (Schmidt 2018; SMPAG Ad-Hoc Working Group on Legal Issues 2020). Hypothetical situations usually…
Asteroids colliding with planets vary in composition and taxonomical type. Among Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are the V-types, basaltic asteroids that are classified via spectroscopic observations. In this work, we study the probability of…
The potentially hazardous asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36 has the possibility of collision with the Earth in the latter half of the 22nd century, well beyond the traditional 100-year time horizon for routine impact monitoring. The probabilities…
As a complement to experimental and theoretical approaches, numerical modeling has become an important component to study asteroid collisions and impact processes. In the last decade, there have been significant advances in both…
Earth is bombarded by meteors, occasionally by one large enough to cause a significant explosion and possible loss of life. Although the odds of a deadly asteroid strike in the next century are low, the most likely impact is by a relatively…
Some asteroids eject dust, producing transient, comet-like comae and tails; these are the active asteroids. The causes of activity in this newly-identified population are many and varied. They include impact ejection and disruption,…
In this paper we define the a posteriori probability W. This quantity is introduced with the aim of suggesting a reliable interpretation of the actual threat posed by a newly discovered Near Earth Asteroid (NEA), for which impacting orbital…
Contraction analysis considers the distance between two adjacent trajectories. If this distance is contracting, then trajectories have the same long-term behavior. The main advantage of this analysis is that it is independent of the…
The subject of this work is the physical characterization of asteroids, focusing on the thermal inertia of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). Thermal inertia governs the Yarkovsky effect, a non-gravitational force which significantly alters the…
When an asteroid has a few observations over a short time span the information contained in the observational arc could be so little that a full orbit determination may be not possible. One of the methods developed in recent years to…
We numerically investigate how an asteroid's elongation controls the sensitivity of its surface to tidal effects during a distant planetary encounter beyond the Roche limit. We analyze the surface slope and its variation by considering the…
A cratered asteroid acts somewhat like a retroflector, sending light and infrared radiation back toward the Sun, while thermal inertia in a rotating asteroid causes the infrared radiation to peak over the ``afternoon'' part. In this paper a…
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…
Numerous decameter-sized asteroids have been observed impacting Earth as fireballs. These objects can have impact energies equivalent to hundreds of kilotons of TNT, posing a hazard if they impact populated areas. Previous estimates of…
The population of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) shows a large variety of objects in terms of physical and dynamical properties. They are subject to planetary encounters and to strong solar wind and radiation effects. Their study is also…
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 meridional component of the earth's rotation is often neglected in geophysical contexts. This is referred to as the `traditional approximation' and is justified by the typically small vertical velocity and aspect ratio of such problems.…
It is customarily assumed that Earth-striking meteoroids are completely random, and that all the impacts must be interpreted as uncorrelated events distributed according to Poisson statistics. If this is correct, their impact dates must be…
Everyday thousands of meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere. The vast majority burn up harmlessly during the descent, but the larger objects survive, occasionally experiencing intense fragmentation events, and reach the ground. These…