Asteroid 2013 ND15: Another Venus Trojan

Asteroid 2013 ND15: Trojan companion to Venus, PHA to the Earth

Authors:

de la Fuente Marcos et al

Abstract:

Venus has three known co-orbitals: (322756) 2001 CK32, 2002 VE68 and 2012 XE133. The first two have absolute magnitudes 18 less than H less than 21. The third one, significantly smaller at H = 23.4 mag, is a recent discovery that signals the probable presence of many other similar objects: small transient companions to Venus that are also potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). Here, we study the dynamical evolution of the recently discovered asteroid 2013 ND15. At H = 24.1 mag, this minor body is yet another small Venus co-orbital and PHA, currently close to the Lagrangian point L4 and following the most eccentric path found so far for objects in this group. This transient Trojan will leave the 1:1 mean motion resonance within a few hundred years although it could be a recurrent librator. Due to its high eccentricity (0.6), its dynamics is different from that of the other three known Venus co-orbitals even if they all are near-Earth objects (NEOs). A Monte Carlo simulation that uses the orbital data and discovery circumstances of the four objects as proxies to estimate the current size of this population, indicates that the number of high-eccentricity, low-inclination Venus co-orbital NEOs may have been greatly underestimated by current models. Three out of four known objects were discovered with solar elongation at perigee greater than 135° even if visibility estimates show that less than 4 per cent of these objects are expected to reach perigee at such large elongations. Our calculations suggest that the number of minor bodies with sizes above 150 m currently engaged in co-orbital motion with Venus could be at least one order of magnitude larger than usually thought; the number of smaller bodies could easily be in many thousands. These figures have strong implications on the fraction of existing PHAs that can barely be detected by current surveys. Nearly 70 per cent of the objects discussed here have elongation at perigee