Granvik, Mikael

Jedicke, Robert

Vaubaillon, Jeremie

Icarus

arXiv

63 pages, 29 figures. The original publication is available at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/icarusInternational audienceWe have for the first time calculated the population characteristics of the Earth's irregular natural satellites (NESs) that are temporarily captured from the near-Earth-object (NEO) population. The steady-state NES size-frequency and residence-time distributions were determined under the dynamical influence of all the massive bodies in the Solar System (but mainly the Sun, Earth, and Moon) for NEOs of negligible mass. To this end, we compute the NES capture probability from the NEO population as a function of the latter's heliocentric orbital elements and combine those results with the current best estimates for the NEO size-frequency and orbital distribution. At any given time there should be at least one NES of 1-m diameter orbiting the Earth. The average temporarily-captured orbiter (TCO; an object that makes at least one revolution around the Earth in a co-rotating coordinate system) completes (2.88 ± 0.82) rev around the Earth during a capture event that lasts (286 ± 18) d. We find a small preference for capture events starting in either January or July. Our results are consistent with the single known natural TCO, 2006 RH120, a few-meter diameter object that was captured for about a year starting in June 2006. We estimate that about 0.1% of all meteors impacting the Earth were TCOs

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The population of natural Earth satellites

International audienceWe present the first debiased size-frequency and orbit distributions for a steady-state population of temporary-captured, natural Earth satellites (NES) excluding the Moon. We use orbital integrations to estimate the capture probability as a function of orbital elements and utilize the steady-state near-Earth-object (NEO) model by Bottke et al. (2002) to estimate the steady-state population of NESs

The population of natural Earth satellites

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