Earth's Little Brother Found

loconet writes "The BBC is reporting that astronomers have discovered the first object ever that is in a companion orbit to the Earth. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is only about 100 metres wide and never comes closer than 3.6 million miles to our planet."

Re:Second Moon

[jfroebe]

No not really. It doesn't have enough mass to make a noticable difference.

jason

Better get the calculations right!

[Randar the Lava Liza]

They better not have any of those metric conversion errors if they try this operation:

Some have speculated that it could be nudged into a permanent Earth orbit where it could be studied at greater length.

cough Mars Climate Orbiter cough.

Horseshoe orbit?

[jovlinger]

Can sny rocket scientists out there explain how two bodies in the same orbit can have different velocities, AND how the relative velocities can change over time?

They claim that for 90 odd years, the asteroid will accellerate ahead of us, to catch up with earth from behind, at which point it will fall back and we'll cath up with it. And then it repeats.

weird! I can't figure out how this is comes about, and the article didn't think it worth mentioning.

Re:600 years?

[joshuac]

from the article:

Detailed observations of its trajectory through space show that 2002 AA29 will reach its minimum close approach to the Earth - 12 times the distance between Earth and the Moon - at 1900 GMT on 8 January 2003.

It will be closest to Earth in 2003, and will be nearby for awhile after. As it is much, much closer than Mars, it very well may become the next body visited.

Doesn't reflect very well on humanity,does it...

[Mac Degger]

I mean, come on...if we're as advanced as we seem to think we are, we should have been able to land something on it on jan 8, 2003.

Yeah, I know, that kind of thing is complex, but I feel we should have that spurious launch capability...god knows it would save us if we ever met something like what hit Jupiter a couple of years back.

Use it!

[Docrates]

I wonder how hard it would be to pull that asteroid to earth orbit for mining or as an anchor to a space elevator, a la the [almost] original concept by Arthur C. Clarke (later designs [highliftsystems.com] use a man made anchor).

If we can mine useful materials, we could build some cool, big ass stuff probably cheaper than we would carry all that weight from the surface.

Friendly asteroids - colonisation!

[krazyninja]

If we are able to collect enough of these "friendly" asteroids, or "trojans" as the article calls them, we can think of establishing colonies on these. Along with space elevators [slashdot.org], there will be micro-colonies on each of these asteroids, between which people can travel, just like between different continents. The only issue is when the asteroids decide to take a different orbit!

Re:Brother? Yes, it is a minor planet

[saskboy]

Any body of rock that is orbiting the Sun and not another planet, is a minor planet if it is not a major planet like Mercury, or Jupiter. Asteroids are also known as minor planets.

Not a paradox.

[Chris Burke]

Neither your sig nor this sentence contains a paradox.

Manned visits to the asteroid...

[Anonymous Coward]

from the article:

Already researchers are speculating that it could be visited by an unmanned spaceprobe or even become the first object after the Moon to be stepped on by astronauts.

That would have to be one gingerly step. Any rock 100m wide would have such a miniscule gravitational attraction that attempting to "step" would likely send the astronaut ricocheting off into space. It might also adversely disrupt the orbit of the asteroid.

Long ago, a reptilian species of space explorers, the Gorn, attempted a similar stunt. They reached the companion asteroid, but when they attempted to land on it, they knocked the rock from its peculiar orbit. 90 years later, it came crashing down to the Gorn's planet. The impact was a global catastrophe, wiping out nearly all the reptilian species on the planet.