Overview

• Researchers led by São Paulo State University report in Astronomy & Astrophysics that modeling and 36,000-year numerical integrations reveal an undercounted population of Venus co-orbital asteroids.
• These objects share a 1:1 resonance with Venus and shift configurations roughly every 12,000 years, with some pathways placing them on Earth-approaching trajectories.
• Only 20 Venus co-orbitals are currently cataloged and almost all are highly eccentric, a pattern the team attributes to an observational bias that misses lower-eccentricity objects near the Sun.
• Analysis of the Vera Rubin Observatory’s capabilities finds such asteroids would be detectable for only one to two weeks at a time near twilight, leaving long gaps that make routine discovery unlikely.
• Simulations include cases with extremely small statistical closest approaches and suggest undiscovered bodies up to ~300 meters across could deliver hundreds of megatons on impact, leading the authors to recommend space-based searches such as NASA’s NEO Surveyor and proposed near-Venus missions like CROWN.