Interrelating Binarity, Physical Properties and Orbital Evolution of Near Earth Asteroids: A New Numerical Approach

Mihailo Cubrovic

Published 2003-08-07, updated 2004-12-17Version 2

Possible connections between the physical properties of Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) and their orbital evolution were explored, with emphasis on binary asteroids. Our main starting hypothesis, suggested from the observations, was that the NEA population contains considerably higher percent of binaries compared to the Main Belt. The simulation covered simultaneously both orbital evolution and evolution of physical properties, which is the main improvement in comparison to the previous researches of this kind. Physical evolution due to tidal forces and collision/disruption events was described with TREESPH hydrocode. The results show typical evolution paths of some types of NEA: asteroids with a satellite, synchronized binaries, single fast rotators, double asteroids. The two latter types and their physical properties match closely to some observed NEA, while the two former ones have not been detected in observational practice. We conjecture that this is partly due to selection effects of current observational techniques but partly also because some of them are likely to evolve into different types of objects (e. g. single slow rotators) through the processes we have not taken into account in our simulation. The total percentage of binaries among NEA can be estimated to 12%. We have to notice, however, that more detailed simulations, performed for longer time spans, are needed to confirm our results.