Fast error-safe MOID computation involving hyperbolic orbits

Abstract

We extend our previous algorithm computing the minimum orbital intersection distance (MOID) to include hyperbolic orbits, and mixed combinations ellipse--hyperbola. The MOID is computed by finding all stationary points of the distance function, equivalent to finding all the roots of an algebraic polynomial equation of 16th degree. The updated algorithm carries about numerical errors as well, and benchmarks confirmed its numeric reliability together with high computing performance.

15 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables; accepted by Astronomy & Computing

References in corpus (4)

• Initial characterization of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov
• On the minimum orbital intersection distance computation: a new effective method
• Fast error-controlling MOID computation for confocal elliptic orbits
• On the nodal distance between two Keplerian trajectories with a common focus