385E-421-New Aten

About this episode

The episode discusses the discovery of an Aten asteroid and its implications for future space exploration and mining.

Recently my Catalina Sky Survey teammates Carson Fuls and Greg Lenoard discovered an Aten asteroid which orbits the Sun once every 272 days and on a path that crosses the orbits of Venus and Earth a number of times each year. Atens account for only about 6% of the Earth approaching asteroids that asteroid hunters discover. They are relatively dim and difficult to discover because they spend most of their time inside the Earth's orbit with their sunlit side facing away from us. For example Carson and Greg's newly discovered asteroid, 2017 WJ16, is bright enough for asteroid hunters to track for only about 50 nights every couple of years. It is about 150 feet in diameter and travels on an orbit which can bring it to a bit more than three times the Moon's distance from Earth. When 2017 WJ16 is closer to the Sun than Earth it travels faster then we do allowing it to catch and just barely cross our orbit as we both travel about the Sun. In 2020, 2017 WJ16 will make one of it's closer approaches to us when it comes to about less than 5 times the Moon's distance from our home planet. At that time it will be traveling at 2.9 miles/second relative to us which is well within reach of our…

People in this episode

Host: Albert D. Grauer

Topics covered

• Aten asteroids
• asteroid discovery
• space mining
• orbital mechanics
• astronomy

Keywords

• Aten asteroid
• 2017 WJ16
• asteroid hunters
• orbital path
• space colonies

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: 2017 WJ16

Places: Earth, Venus, Moon

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