Stability regions around the components of the triple system 2001 SN263

Abstract

Space missions are an excellent way to increase our knowledge of asteroids. Near‐Earth asteroids (NEAs) are good targets for such missions, as they periodically approach the orbit of the Earth. Thus, an increasing number of missions to NEAs are being planned worldwide. Recently, NEA (153591) 2001 SN263 was chosen as the target of the ASTER MISSION – the First Brazilian Deep Space Mission, with launch planned for 2015. NEA (153591) 2001 SN263 was discovered in 2001. In 2008 February, radio astronomers from Arecibo‐Puerto Rico concluded that (153591) 2001 SN263 is actually a triple system. The announcement of ASTER MISSION has motivated the development of the present work, whose goal is to characterize regions of stability and instability of the triple system (153591) 2001 SN263. Understanding and characterizing the stability of such a system is an important component in the design of the mission aiming to explore it. The method adopted consisted of dividing the region around the system into four distinct regions (three of them internal to the system and one external). We performed numerical integrations of systems composed of seven bodies, namely the Sun, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and the three components of the asteroid system (Alpha, the most massive body; Beta the second most massive body; and Gamma, the least massive body), and of thousands of particles randomly distributed within the demarcated regions, for the planar and inclined prograde cases. The results are displayed as diagrams of semi‐major axis versus eccentricity that show the percentage of particles that survive for each set of initial conditions. The regions where 100 per cent of the particles survive are defined as stable regions. We found that the stable regions are in the neighbourhood of Alpha and Beta, and in the external region. Resonant motion of the particles with Beta and Gamma was identified in the internal regions, leading to instability. For particles with I > 45° in the internal region, where I is the inclination with respect to Alpha’s equator, there is no stable region, except for particles placed very close to Alpha. The stability in the external region is not affected by the variation of inclination. We also present a discussion of the long‐term stability in the internal region, for the planar and circular case, with comparisons with the short‐term stability.

The triple near-Earth asteroid (153591) 2001 SN263: an ultra-blue, primitive target for the Aster space mission

“…The remarkable characteristics of 2001 SN263, including the relatively large size and spacing of the components, which make the system safe to explore (Araujo et al 2012), have drawn the attention of planetary scientists and space agencies: formerly the target of the Amor mission (not selected for the NASA Discovery program 2010; Jones et al 2011), this triple system is currently the primary target of the Brazilian Aster project, which is planned to reach, then orbit and study the system for about 10 months. Different possible launch dates have been identified in the 2014-2020 time frame (Sukhanov et al 2010).…”

Traveling Between the Earth-Moon Lagrangian Points and the Earth

“…This system has an eccentricity e = 0.48 and a semi-major axis a = 1.99 A.U. 5 . The distance considered for the simulations is the periapsis, which is about 1 A.U.…”

Searching for orbits around the triple asteroid 2001SN263

“…This paper proposes to map orbits [9][10] that can be used by a spacecraft around Beta and Gamma. Each orbit can be identified by the initial conditions of the spacecraft with respect to Beta or Gamma: position and velocity.…”