From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 10:24:47 MDT
The Linear survey has discovered a new small (100m) asteroid 2002 AA29
that is coorbital with the Earth.
See BBC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2347663.stm
(some of it seems a little confused)
Slashdot Discussion:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/22/0017249&mode=thread&tid=160
A discussion of the orbits of asteroids like this:
Near-Earth asteroid 3753 Cruithne -- Earth's curious companion
http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.html
Some theoretical background:
http://www.paias.com/paias/home/Science/Newton/Newt8Fig5Orbits.htm
NASA's page to display the orbit:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db?name=2002AA29&group=all&search=Search°Vß
[requires JAVA, doesn't work in Netscape]
This will be interesting because as more NEO surveys are launched
or as larger telescopes are built we will see increasingly smaller
objects.
Spike, would you care to comment on the energy required to put a
5-10 m diameter asteroid into orbit around the Earth (or moon
if you don't want it *too* close)?
Robert
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