The Hill Stability of Triple Minor Planets in the Solar System

TL;DR

This study analyzes the Hill stability of all nine known triple minor planets in the Solar system, finding most are stable and identifying factors influencing their stability.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive Hill stability analysis of all known triple minor planets, including new stability criteria for systems with large size ratios.

Findings

All but one system are Hill stable based on current data.

Stability increases with lower mutual inclination and smaller semimajor axis ratios.

Outer satellite mass ratio positively correlates with stability.

Abstract

The triple asteroids and triple Kuiper belt objects (collectively called the triple minor planets) in the Solar system are of particular interest to the scientific community since the discovery of the first triple asteroid system in 2004. In this paper, the Hill stability of the nine known triple minor planets in the Solar system is investigated. Seven of the systems are of large size ratio, i.e. they consist of a larger primary and two moonlets, while the other two systems have components of comparable size. Each case is treated separately. For the triple minor planets that have large size ratio, the sufficient condition for Hill stability is expressed in closed form. This is not possible for the systems with comparable size components, for which the Hill stability is assessed by a combination of analytical and numerical means. It is found that all the known triple minor planets are Hill stable, except 3749 Balam, for which the incomplete orbital parameters make the Hill stability of the system uncertain. This suggests that there might be more such stable triple minor planets in the Solar system yet to be observed. It is also shown that the Hill stability regions increase as the mutual inclination between the inner orbit and outer orbit decreases, the semimajor axis ratio of the inner orbit with respect to the outer orbit decreases, and the mass ratio of the outer satellite with respect to the inner satellite increases. This study therefore provides useful information about dynamical properties of the triple minor planets in the Solar system.