Asteroid Retrieval and Processing

See earlier discussion regarding NEO 3753 Cruithne (c.f., http://aries.phys.yorku.ca/~wiegert/3753.html ). It wanders all over the place.

Ron Menich

"Dr. Omni"
09/26/01 03:10 PM

[snikt]
> Fourth --- to be done only after steps (1)-(3) have been actioned ---
> launch some automated sky search telescopes of the caliber of LINEAR to
> Sun-Earth L2 or some other appropriate place in the Inner Solar System.
> With 24x7x365 viewing ability, these space-based sky search telescopes
> would find thousands of NEOs yearly, and expand the list of known very
> small NEOs to the hundreds.
>

Another interesting mission would be to send a space telescope to Sun-Venus
L2. In that position, it could attest whether there are or not Lagrangian
populations of asteroids bounded to Earth, much like Jupiter's Greek and
Trojans. Those SELOs (Sun-Earth Lagrangian Objects, as I call them) would
have somewhat fixed positions relatively to Earth and, if my intuitive
understanding of orbital mechanics is correct, negligible delta-v.
Considering that Mars does have at least one know Lagrangian asteroid, one
could expect that Earth, a much more massive body, should also have some.

(Now that I have just read the e-mail from King Rodent, I also realize that
this telescope at Sun-Venus L2 would also be able to detect much more NEOs
than those that you can see from Earth, due to the "full moon" effect.)

[snikt]
> Ron Menich
> *********************************
[snikt]

Lucio Coelho