The asteroid 2020 CD3, seen earlier this year, is just the second temporary natural satellite, or minimum, ever discovered around the Earth. It won’t stick too long, but we learned some interesting things about our temporary partner And it’s a good idea why there is a mission to prevent similar inter-objects.
Asteroid 2020 was CD3 First spotD By astronauts from the Catalina Sky Survey on February 15, 2020 at the University of Arizona. Some initial calculations were made about its size and orbit, but new Research Published in the Astronomical Journal, it is providing the most accurate analysis of the rare minimum yet.
Indeed, “rare” may not be the correct way to say it. More like “rarely found.” Minimals or temporary natural satellites, perhaps quite common – they are just infamous hard to see, Due to their small size and fickle nature. But a.k.a. as the Institute of Astronomy (IFA) of the University of Hawaii Statement, Were about 1 in every 1,000 meteors burning in the Earth’s atmosphere Once a minute. These Earth objects aren’t big enough to cause problems on the Earth’s surface, and they make a few wacky loops around the Earth before resuming the track around a more attractive object, Sun:
Minimals feel physical, But the 2020 CD3 got a lot of attention; The new paper has 23 authors from 14 different educational institutions.
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First and foremost, the new paper ruled out the possibility that the 2020 CD3 was the backbone of space junk. The area-to-mass ratio and low luminosity of the object indicate that it is a silicate asteroid, and not, for example, a rocket-propelled rocket booster or a weird Tesla roadster. The same cannot be said for that Future minutes It was discovered last September .The Centaur, launched by NASA in 1966, is believed to be a second-stage rocket.
Asteroid 2020 CD3 is slightly smaller than initial estimates. It’s about 9.9 feet (1.5 m) wide, so it’s a little bigger than a dishwasher, and definitely bigger than a breadbox. The authors say it is probably a fragment that has been broken by a large planet And it originated somewhere between Mars and Jupiter.
“It is incredible that modern astronomy telescopes can detect the size of rocks larger than the moon,” said IFA astronomer and study author Robert JDK. University of Hawaii Statement.
Researchers were also able to characterize the orbits of object objects with greater precision. It turns out, the 2020 CD3 has been in minimo mode for the last 2.5 years – we don’t know that. The object was circling the object Earth from 2018, but it moved in a closer approach, during which time it was discovered by scientists with the Catalina Sky Survey.
In total, the 2020 CD3 spent 2.7 years as a temporarily built natural satellite before resuming its journey around the sun. Catch this long pen study Surprisingly authors, such as imitations, predict short periods for the object. The researchers said the observations were “contracted with minimal minimums that have close lunar encounters, providing additional support to orbital models”. Write. Also, the budget theoretically revolves faster than the rates predicted by models Dello, which suggests that “our understanding of meter-scale asteroids needs to be improved.”
Really, it seems like we still have a lot to learn about these things, which makes sense, Granted, this is only the second known minimum, the first being the 2006 RH120, Discovered 14 years ago. The minimums now represent good targets for future missions, as stated in a statement by Gregory Fedorets, an astrophysicist at Queens University in Belfast and lead author of the new paper.
“The minimums effectively bring the asteroid belt closer to Earth, so that from an astronomical point of view, we can get there and touch them and collect potential samples,” he said.
Minimum mission (it has a nice ring) Can provide unique information regarding the initial conditions of our solar system, while also providing a close platform for testing asteroid mining techniques, according to Fedorets.
We’re not sure if the 2020 CD3 will return to these parts again, but the authors of the new paper state that, we should expect to find at least one in the coming years, especially with the next one. Vera c. Rubin Observatory.
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