The Toasty Solar System: Inside Earth's Orbit

Details The Toasty Solar System: Inside Earth's Orbit The Toasty Solar System: Inside Earth's Orbit

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.1309g&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #13.09; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1054

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

In 2011 the Canadian Space Agency will launch the NEOSSat spacecraft (Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite). This space telescope will survey the sky at low solar elongations for 1-2 years and be especially sensitive to near-Earth objects (NEOs) with semimajor axes smaller than 1 AU, including objects at heliocentric distances as small as that of Venus. The search will be optimized to obtain information on the NEO orbital distribution for Aten (Q>0.983 AU but a<1 AU) and Atira-class asteroids (Q<0.983 AU, sometimes called IEOs).
For the purposes of planning the NEOSSat pointing strategy in search mode, we have extended the NEO orbital-distribution study of Bottke et al (2002, Icarus, vol 156, 399). By computing many more artificial NEO trajectories as they leave their source regions in the main asteroid belt, we have decreased the statistical uncertainty in the a<1 AU region (which was visited by only a relatively-small number of particles in the original 2002 model). We also greatly increased the accuracy of the integrations, allowing the direct inclusion of Mercury in the integrations and better resolution of the high-velocity encounters with the terrestrial planets which become common as the NEOs evolve dynamically.
Our new integrations better define the orbital distribution in the a<1 AU region. We show that median NEO orbital inclinations rise to large values (>30 degrees). The integrations exhibit Mercury impacts, and we compute both NEO impact rates and impact speed distributions on the terrestrial planets. Orbits that are entirely decoupled from Venus are produced, and we explore their orbital histories and discuss how they might be detected.

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