Commission F4 Asteroids, Comets & Transneptunian Objects

News

  NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule successfully landed on Sep 24, 2003 and delivered a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu.   https://www.asteroidmission.org/latest-news/

  The ESA Hera mission, which will measure in details DART impact outcome and the properties of Didymos through a rendezvous with the system and various close proximity operations, passed successfully the Critical Design Review in November 2022. The primary launch window opens in October 2024 and the mission is on track to meet this date and arrive at Didymos for 6 months of investigations over the first semester of 2027 (https://www.heramission.space/).

 


Highlights in asteroids, comets & TNOs study in 2023

EVENTS:

  • NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission successfully delivered a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu to Earth. Post-delivery, the spacecraft transitioned to the OSIRIS-APEX mission, targeting the exploration of the near-Earth asteroid Apophis.
    https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex/




  • Gaia's Focused Product Release (FPR) unveiled a groundbreaking dataset, including 5 years of asteroid astrometry for over 150,000 asteroids. This data, spanning the nominal Gaia mission duration, led to orbits 20 times more precise than Gaia Data Release 3, significantly impacting asteroid mass determinations and predictions of stellar occultations.
    https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/focused-product-release


PUBLICATIONS:

A total of over 1400 peer-reviewed papers were published in 2023 according to NASA-ADS database, including ~950 papers on asteroids, ~400 papers on comets, and ~70 papers on Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) and Pluto. The predominant themes remained investigations of near-Earth asteroids, particularly those targeted by the DART, Osiris-Rex, and Hayabusa2 space missions.

SOME RESULTS:

 

Highlights in asteroids, comets & TNOs study in 2022

EVENTS:


  • The Data Release 3 by the Gaia mission (ESA), appeared in June 2022 ( https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/data-release-3), is the first large scale publication of asteroid astrometry by the mission, for 158,152 small bodies (asteroids of all types, TNOs, natural satellites of the planets), observed over 34 months. It also includes visible spectra for 60,518 asteroids. The survey properties illustrated by two articles appeared in the special issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics devoted to DR3: https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202243796; https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202243791. Coupled with improved orbital determinations, GDR3 photometric and spectroscopic data are expected to be a primary source for any advancement in asteroids science in the next years.

PUBLICATIONS:

More than 1450 peer-reviewed papers were published in 2022 according to NASA-ADS database, including ~900 papers on asteroids, ~400 papers on comets, and ~150 papers on TNOs and Pluto. The most popular topics were investigations of near-Earth asteroids in particular targets of the space missions DART, OSIRIX-Rex, Hayubusa2.

SOME RESULTS:

 

Highlights in asteroids, comets & TNOs study in 2021

EVENTS:

PUBLICATIONS:

More than 1600 peer-reviewed papers were published in 2021 according to NASA-ADS database, including ~900 papers on asteroids, ~330 papers on comets, and ~370 papers on TNOs and Pluto. The most popular topics were investigations of near-Earth asteroids, Jupiter Trojans, and Pluto.

SOME RESULTS:

 

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