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5h ago

Study Flags Hidden Venus Co-Orbitals That Could Drift Into Earth-Crossing Paths

Low-eccentricity paths keep many of these asteroids near the Sun, prompting calls for space-based searches.

This image of asteroid 1 Ceres was captured by the Dawn spacecraft May 4, 2015, at a distance of 8,476 miles (13,641 kilometers). Because it lies within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Ceres poses no threat to Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/Justin Cowart
View larger. | Artist's illustration of a group of asteroids near Venus. 'Invisible' asteroids - ones not yet detected by telescopes - that share the same orbit as Venus could pose a threat to Earth in the future, as new study says. Image via Valerio Carruba/Google Gemini/ Agência FAPESP.

Overview

  • A peer-reviewed UNESP study in Astronomy & Astrophysics models a larger, largely unseen population of asteroids sharing Venus’s orbit.
  • Only 20 Venus co-orbitals are catalogued, almost all with eccentricities above 0.38, a distribution researchers attribute to observational bias.
  • Simulations find these orbits switch configurations roughly every 12,000 years, with some trajectories evolving to approach and potentially cross Earth’s path over millennia.
  • Objects around 300 meters across could be hidden in this group, with an Earth impact releasing energy on the scale of hundreds of megatons.
  • Ground facilities such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory would catch them only in brief windows of one to two weeks, so researchers urge near-Sun space surveys like NASA’s NEO Surveyor and China’s proposed CROWN mission.