Stability Regions Around the Components of the Triple System 2001 SN263

Abstract

The NEAs (Near-Earth Asteroids) are good targets for spatial missions, since they periodically approach the orbit of the Earth. Recently, the NEA (153591) 2001 SN263 was chosen as the target of the ASTER MISSION- First Brazilian Deep Space Mission, planned to be launched in 2015. In February 2008, the radio astronomers from Arecibo-Puerto Rico concluded that (153591) 2001 SN263 is actually a triple system (Nolan et al., 2008). The announcement of the ASTER MISSION has motivated the development of the present work, whose goal is to characterize regions of stability and instability of the triple system (153591) 2001 SN263. The method adopted consisted in dividing the region around the system into four distinct regions. We have performed numerical integrations of systems composed by seven bodies: Sun, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and the three components of the system, and by thousands of particles randomly distributed within the demarcated regions, for the planar and inclined prograde cases. The results are diagrams of semi-major axis versus eccentricity, where it is shown the percentage of particles that survive for each set of initial conditions. The regions where 100% of the particles survive is defined as stable regions. We found that the stable regions are in the neighborhood of Alpha and Beta, and in the external region. It was identified resonant motion of the particles with Beta and Gamma in the internal regions, which lead to instability. For particles with I>45° in the internal region, where I is the inclination with respect to Alpha's equator, there is no stable region, except for the particles placed really close to Alpha. The stability in the external region is not affected by the variation of inclination. We also present a discussion on the long-term stability in the internal region, for the planar and circular cases, with comparisons with the short-term stability.

18 pages, 14 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication at MNRAS in 2012 April 4

References in corpus (5)

• Orbits of Near-Earth Asteroid Triples 2001 SN263 and 1994 CC: Properties, Origin, and Evolution
• Frozen Orbits at high eccentricity and inclination: Application to Mercury orbiter
• Binary Asteroid Encounters with Terrestrial Planets: Timescales and Effects
• On the Stability of the Satellites of Asteroid 87 Sylvia
• The Role of Kozai Cycles in Near-Earth Binary Asteroids

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Equilibrium Points and Periodic Orbits in the Vicinity of Asteroids with an Application to 216 Kleopatra
• Dynamical Configurations of Celestial Systems Comprised of Multiple Irregular Bodies
• Asteroid triple system 2001 SN263 : surfaces characteristics and dynamical environment
• Stable retrograde orbits around the triple system 2001 SN263
• Poincaré surfaces of section around a 3-D irregular body: The case of asteroid 4179 Toutatis
• The Hill Stability of Triple Minor Planets in the Solar System
• Mapping stable direct and retrograde orbits around the triple system of asteroids (45) Eugenia
• Relative Effect of Inclinations for Moonlets in the Triple Asteroidal Systems
• 2001 SN263 -- the contribution of their irregular shapes on the neighborhood dynamics