Posted on 10/21/2002 2:37:19 PM PDT by blam
That's what Pete's hoping for. It's just amusing to watch him work.
"Horseshoe" relative to Earth. It's actually always moving the same direction around the sun. Think of the "horseshoe" as an extreme example of Ptolomaic epicycles.
Astronomy Picture of the Day 5-04-02 [3753 Cruithne mentioned in replies]
NASA | 5-04-02 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell
Posted on 05/04/2002 7:26:04 AM PDT by petuniasevan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/677904/posts
Cat-And-Mouse Asteroid Pulls Close To Earth [2002 AA29]
IOL | 1-3-2003
Posted on 01/04/2003 10:12:20 AM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/816864/posts
Odd Asteroid [2003 GQ22]
spaceweather.com | april-15-2003 | spaceweather.com
Posted on 04/15/2003 2:06:02 PM PDT by green team 1999
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/893881/posts
Say hello to our new moon [2003 YN17]
AFP | Fri Mar 26, 2004
Posted on 03/29/2004 12:13:58 PM PST by presidio9
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1107346/posts
page about 2003 CP20, which isn't currently a moon, but co-orbital:
http:.com//www.hohmanntransfer.com/cgi-bin/get.cgi?des=2003cp20
Dated: 25 July 2004
Disc: 3 Aug. 2000 at LINEAR, New Mexico, MPEC 2000-P32
http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/cat/an4.htm#an54509
2000 PH5 was discovered by MIT's LINEAR program on 3 Aug. 2000. It is estimated from its brightness to be about 110 meters/yards across, and is described by Ondrejov Observatory's NEO program as a "superfast rotator." Radar observations were reported 27-28 July 2001 from Goldstone at 5.3 lunar distances (LD) in the midst of a Spaceguard observing campaign. It flew over (north of) Earth on 25 July 2002 at about 4.7 LD.
Paul Wiegert reported in 2001 that he and his co-authors on 3753 Cruithne research will be showing that, like Cruithne, PH5 appears to be locked into an orbital resonance with the Earth.
Earth coorbital asteroid 2002 AA29
Martin Connors, Paul Chodas, Seppo Mikkola,
Paul Wiegert, Christian Veillet, Kimmo Innanen
September 2002
http://www.astro.uwo.ca/~wiegert/AA29/AA29.html
An international team of astronomers has found that an asteroid discovered earlier this year follows Earth's orbit around the Sun and will, in nearly 600 years, appear to orbit the Earth. In the October issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, the astronomers announce that the asteroid, named 2002 AA29, follows a "horseshoe orbit" that makes it come near the Earth every 95 years. It will next come close on January 8, 2003, although even then it will be much further away than the Moon and only detectable using large telescopes. The combination of Earth's and Sun's gravity works so that even as Earth pulls in the asteroid, it speeds up and moves away from the Earth. In this way Earth is protected from impact, despite the similarity of the asteroid's orbit to Earth's.
The ESA Venus spacecraft is due to go into planetary orbit on 11 April. NASA has one on the way to Mercury, which will take several years to get there, and the Mars probe just launched is looking good. Amazing that nothing is going to the moon.
Nothing *yet*. :')
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