Three new stable L5 Mars Trojans

Abstract

Mars was second to Jupiter in being recognized as the host of a population of Trojan minor bodies. Since 1990, five asteroids - 5261 Eureka, (101429) 1998 VF31, (121514) 1999 UJ7, 2001 DH47 and (311999) 2007 NS2 - have been identified as Mars Trojans, one L4 and four L5. Dynamical and spectroscopic evidence suggests that some Mars Trojans may be remnants of the original planetesimal population that formed in the terrestrial planets region. Here we revisit the long-term dynamical evolution of the previously known Mars Trojans and show that 2011 SC191, 2011 SL25 and 2011 UN63 are also trailing (L5) Mars Trojans. They appear to be as stable as Eureka and may have been Trojans over the age of the Solar system. The fact that five Trojans move in similar orbits and one of them is a binary may point to the disruption of a larger body early in the history of the Solar system. Such a catastrophic event may also explain the apparently strong asymmetry in terms of number of objects (one versus seven) between the L4 and L5 regions. Future spectroscopic observations should be able to reject or confirm a putative common chemical signature that may lend further support to collisional scenario.

5 pages, 5 figures (degraded to lower resolution), 2 tables, matches version published (Advance Access, March 26, 2013) in MNRAS Letters

References in corpus (4)

• On the dynamical evolution of 2002 VE68
• Composition of the L5 Mars Trojans: Neighbors, not Siblings
• Albedos and diameters of three Mars Trojan asteroids
• An optimal Mars Trojan asteroid search strategy

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Olivine-dominated asteroids: Mineralogy and origin
• A Martian Origin for the Mars Trojan Asteroids
• Yarkovsky-Driven Spreading of the Eureka Family of Mars Trojans
• The Second Earth Trojan 2020 XL${}_5$
• Horseshoe Co-orbitals of Earth: Current Population and New Candidates
• The olivine-dominated composition of the Eureka family of Mars Trojan asteroids
• Population control of Mars Trojans by the Yarkovsky & YORP effects
• An attempt to build a dynamical catalog of Solar System co-orbitals
• Hungaria region as possible source of Trojans and satellites in the inner solar-system
• A Search for L4 Earth Trojan Asteroids Using a Novel Track-Before-Detect Multi-Epoch Pipeline
• A dynamical context for the origin of Phobos and Deimos
• Using Mars co-orbitals to estimate the importance of rotation-induced YORP break-up events in Earth co-orbital space
• (121514) 1999 UJ7: A primitive, slow-rotating Martian Trojan
• Transient Jupiter Co-orbitals from Solar System Sources
• Is the Eureka cluster a collisional family of Mars Trojan asteroids?
• MEGASIM: Lifetimes and Resonances of Earth Trojan Asteroids -- The Death of Primordial ETAs?
• The effect of orbital damping during planet migration on the Inclination and Eccentricity Distributions of Neptune Trojans
• Predictions for the Detection of Earth and Mars Trojan Asteroids by the Gaia satellite
• Dynamics of 2023 FW14, the second L4 Mars trojan, and a physical characterization using the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias
• The Stability of Uranus Trojans Over the Age of the Solar System
• New asteroid clusters and evidence of collisional fragmentation in the L5 Trojan cloud of Mars