Comet and Asteroid Hazard to the Terrestrial Planets

Abstract

We estimated the rate of comet and asteroid collisions with the terrestrial planets by calculating the orbits of 13000 Jupiter-crossing objects (JCOs) and 1300 resonant asteroids and computing the probabilities of collisions based on random-phase approximations and the orbital elements sampled with a 500 yr step. The Bulirsh-Stoer and a symplectic orbit integrator gave similar results for orbital evolution, but may give different collision probabilities with the Sun. A small fraction of former JCOs reached orbits with aphelia inside Jupiter's orbit, and some reached Apollo orbits with semi-major axes less than 2 AU, Aten orbits, and inner-Earth orbits (with aphelia less than 0.983 AU) and remained there for millions of years. Though less than 0.1% of the total, these objects were responsible for most of the collision probability of former JCOs with Earth and Venus. We conclude that a significant fraction of near-Earth objects could be extinct comets that came from the trans-Neptunian region.

"Advances in Space Research" (Proc. of COSPAR-2002 (10-19 October 2002, Houston, TX, USA), COSPAR02-A-00845), final text

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• Long-Term Dynamics and the Orbital Inclinations of the Classical Kuiper Belt Objects
• Orbital evolution of the P/1996 R2 and P/1996 N2 objects
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