> Over time they tend to evolve to other types of resonant motion, where they no longer remain in the planet's neighbourhood, then possibly later move back to a quasi-satellite orbit, etc.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission was never about going all the way to the Asteroid Belt.
We have discovered about 2000 near earth asteroids so far, this one is cool because it also orbits the earth in a fairly closed pattern but it's not unique.
That said the orbit of this one actually doesn't make it a good candidate for the ARM as it seems to be further than pretty much every ARM candidate and it's orbit isn't really good either. What we want is something that would woosh close us anyhow and we need only a relative small amount of energy to redirect it into an earth or lunar capture orbit (lunar is of course safer since if we screw up the math it doesn't end up blowing a landmark like something that was picked up off michael bay's cutting floor).
Our orbit is quite dirty there are probably over 10,000 NEO's, but Pluto's orbit is even dirtier.
Earth is the 30 year old single guy/gal, Pluto is the 19 year old college slob.
I think the criteria is that it has cleared its orbit of similar sized bodies. Smaller bodies are OK. Pluto has several bodies of similar size in its neighborhood.
8 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] thread...and then what? Would be interesting if they speculated on the end game. Or perhaps they already know.
> Over time they tend to evolve to other types of resonant motion, where they no longer remain in the planet's neighbourhood, then possibly later move back to a quasi-satellite orbit, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-satellite
We have discovered about 2000 near earth asteroids so far, this one is cool because it also orbits the earth in a fairly closed pattern but it's not unique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object
That said the orbit of this one actually doesn't make it a good candidate for the ARM as it seems to be further than pretty much every ARM candidate and it's orbit isn't really good either. What we want is something that would woosh close us anyhow and we need only a relative small amount of energy to redirect it into an earth or lunar capture orbit (lunar is of course safer since if we screw up the math it doesn't end up blowing a landmark like something that was picked up off michael bay's cutting floor).