Virtual asteroids and virtual impactors

When a celestial body, e.g., an asteroid, has been observed only over a short time, its orbit is not well determined but may be anywhere in a confidence region where the astrometric residuals are acceptable. This region can be sampled by a swarm of Virtual Asteroids (VA) sharing the reality of the asteroid: one of them is real, but we do not know which one. The problem is how to sample the confidence region with a small number of VA, still being able to solve the main problems of asteroid recovery/identification and impact monitoring.