Near-Earth Asteroids — An Exploratory Analysis

Fig 1 — Asteroid 243 Ida as seen by the Galileo probe on August 28, 1993. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Processed by Kevin M. Gill, Ida’s moon Dactyl is on the right

Our Solar System is a strange place and there’s a lot we don’t know and don’t fully understand. There’s no better way to reflect on this point than to take a historical perspective. The discovery and characterisation of the planets and other bodies in our Solar System can serve as a great starting point. I’ve been spending some time on Solar System dynamics and thought I’d take a close look at asteroids, specifically the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter as well as Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs). There’s much to learn here so let’s dive in!

What are asteroids?

Fig 2 — Asteroids are more abundant in the inner regions of the Solar System, (image credit, Murray, Carl D., and Stanley F. Dermott. Solar System Dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

Taking a modern perspective, asteroids are minor planets and as the classification suggests, they tend to be significantly smaller than a planet or planet moons. The term is more commonly used to describe the group of small objects that inhabit the inner portions of our Solar System. Around 200 years ago very little was know about these small objects. The first asteroid to be discovered, Ceres (or 1 Ceres) was only discovered in 1801.

Ceres is a beautiful object, nearly spherical to the point where it was initially considered to be a planet. Ceres was subsequently…