Asteroid (469219) 2016 HO₃, the smallest and closest Earth quasi-satellite

Abstract

A number of Earth co-orbital asteroids experience repeated transitions between the quasisatellite and horseshoe dynamical states. Asteroids 2001 GO 2 , 2002 AA 29 , 2003 and 2015 SO 2 are well-documented cases of such a dynamical behaviour. These transitions depend on the gravitational influence of other planets, owing to the overlapping of a multiplicity of secular resonances. Here, we show that the recently discovered asteroid (469219) 2016 HO 3 is a quasi-satellite of our planet -the fifth one, joining the ranks of (164207) 2004 GU 9 , (277810) 2006 FV 35 , 2013 LX 28 and 2014 OL 339 . This new Earth co-orbital also switches repeatedly between the quasi-satellite and horseshoe configurations. Its current quasi-satellite episode started nearly 100 yr ago and it will end in about 300 yr from now. The orbital solution currently available for this object is very robust and our full N-body calculations show that it may be a long-term companion (time-scale of Myr) to our planet. Among the known Earth quasi-satellites, it is the closest to our planet and as such, a potentially accessible target for future in situ study. Due to its presumably lengthy dynamical relationship with the Earth and given the fact that at present and for many decades this transient object remains well positioned with respect to our planet, the results of spectroscopic studies of this small body, 26-115 m, may be particularly useful to improve our understanding of the origins -local or captured-of Earth's co-orbital asteroid population. The non-negligible effect of the uncertainty in the value of the mass of Jupiter on the stability of this type of co-orbitals is also briefly explored.

Developing Prototype Simulants for Surface Materials and Morphology of Near Earth Asteroid 2016 HO3

“…The near-earth asteroid (469219) 2016 HO3 was found on 27th of April 2016 by the 1.8 m Ritchey-Chretien telescope of the Pan-STRARRS Project [10]. The current available orbital properties of this body were estimated through terrestrial observations spanning a data-arc of 5140 d or 14.07 yr, from 17th March of 2004 to 27th April of 2019.…”

Characterization of Temporarily Captured Minimoon 2020 CD3 by Keck Time-resolved Spectrophotometry

“…The ZTF survey, based on the Palomar Observatory's P48 Oschin Schmidt telescope, consists of a number of survey programs, some that are open to the public and some that are internal to the ZTF collaboration and Caltech, that are designed to cover the entire sky and detect transient sources, including solar system asteroids and comets (Graham et al 2019). The ZTF survey camera consists of a 576 megapixel array with a pixel scale of 1 01 pixel −1 covering a 7°.4 × 7°.4 field of view (Dekany et al 2016) and g-, r-, and i-band filters with r∼20.5 to an S/N=5 depth in a 30 s exposure generally used in the survey (Bellm et al 2019). The ZTF data system has the ability to detect both round, pointspread function-like detections (Masci et al 2019) and fastmoving objects moving >5″ m −1 , resulting in the detections becoming significantly trailed (Duev et al 2019;Ye et al 2019b) in the survey's 30 s exposures.…”

Mission design for multi-target and multi-mode rendezvous missions to small bodies

“…我 国 计 划 开 展 的 小 天 体 探 测 任 务 , 小 行 星 2016HO3和主带彗星133P是备选探测目标. 其中 2016HO3属于一类特殊的近地小行星 [1] , 该小行星的 (1 )( + ) ( 1 + ) , , , , ) 表 1 小行星2016HO3和彗星133P轨道参数(MJD=57800)…”