The Need for Speed: Characterizing Near Earth Asteroids
Abstract
The current discovery rate of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) is set to increase dramatically in the next few years from ~900/year to 2,000-3,000/year thanks to new and upgraded surveys. Characterization of this population is crucial to science, space missions, and planetary hazard assessment. Despite this, the rate of followup observations is expected to remain the same, at ~100 spectra and a few dozen light curves collected per year. At this rate it would take up to a century to characterize just the NEA population with sizes above 100m. Herein we discuss the challenges of NEA followup observations, and we show quantitatively why these are optimally made within days of discovery. We describe how a semi-dedicated 4m-class telescope can keep better pace with projected discoveries and allow us to constrain NEA compositions, constructions, sizes, spins, and orbits.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #224
- Pub Date:
- June 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014AAS...22432110M