Near-Earth asteroids orbit propagation with Gaia observations

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how Gaia's precise astrometric data can improve orbit predictions for Near-Earth Asteroids, addressing challenges of short observation arcs and potential object loss.

Contribution

It introduces methods to utilize Gaia data for NEA orbit determination and recovery strategies for newly discovered faint objects.

Findings

Gaia will significantly enhance NEA orbit accuracy.

Short-arc Gaia observations require specialized orbit determination methods.

Strategies are proposed for recovering faint NEAs discovered by Gaia.

Abstract

Gaia is an astrometric mission that will be launched in 2013 and set on L2 point of Lagrange. It will observe a large number of Solar System Objets (SSO) down to magnitude 20. The Solar System Science goal is to map thousand of Main Belt asteroids (MBAs), Near Earth Objects (NEOs) (including comets) and also planetary satellites with the principal purpuse of orbital determination (better than 5 mas astrometric precision), determination of asteroid mass, spin properties and taxonomy. Besides, Gaia will be able to discover a few objects, in particular NEOs in the region down to the solar elongation 45{\deg} which are harder to detect with current ground-based surveys. But Gaia is not a follow-up mission and newly discovered objects can be lost if no ground-based recovery is processed. The purpose of this study is to quantify the impact of Gaia data for the known NEAs population and to show how to handle the problem of these discoveries when faint number of observations and thus very short arc is provided.