From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Thu Sep 12 2002 - 19:41:00 MDT
Jeff Davis wrote on Thursday, September 12, 2002 8:52 pm,
> Near-Earth asteroid 3753 Cruithne
> --Earth's curious companion--
>
> at:
>
> http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.html
>
> Cruithne, which is 3 miles across (4.8km), is in fact
> a Trojan asteroid, and has an eccentric horseshoe
> orbit around Earth which takes 770 years to complete.
I am familiar with Cruithne. It only gets within 9 million miles of earth,
if I recall. It is a new class of satellite in that it doesn't just loop
around the Earth. It loops around the earth and the sun in a weird
horseshoe orbit.
There seem to be three types of satellites.
- Long-term circular orbit moons around the equator
- Short-term elliptical orbit moons with high eccentricities
- Far asteroids orbiting far away in loose relationships in the LaGrange
points like Trojan asteroids.
I think Cruithne is one of these latter types with a more complicated orbit.
The planet Uranus has a similar object, and others planets may also have
some of these objects.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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