{"id":1748,"date":"2024-11-04T20:29:35","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T17:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/?p=1748"},"modified":"2025-11-20T12:38:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T09:38:25","slug":"and-asteroids-have-their-own-satellites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/2024\/11\/04\/and-asteroids-have-their-own-satellites\/","title":{"rendered":"And asteroids have their own satellites"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Space Agency’s Gaia star-gazing mission has once again proven its ability to explore asteroids, discovering potential moons around more than 350 asteroids that are not known to have moons.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Gaia has previously surveyed asteroids known to have moons \u2013 so-called \u201cbinary asteroids\u201d \u2013 and confirmed that telltale signs of these tiny moons showed up in the telescope\u2019s ultra-precise astrometry data. But this new discovery proves that Gaia can conduct \u201cblind\u201d searches to find entirely new candidates, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBinary asteroids are difficult to detect because they are mostly very small and far away from us,\u201d says Luana Liberato of the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur Observatory in France, lead author of the new study. \u201cAlthough we expected just under one-sixth of asteroids to have a companion, so far we have only detected 500 of the million known asteroids in binary systems. But this discovery shows that there are many asteroid satellites just waiting to be found.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nGaia has discovered possible moons around hundreds of asteroids. ESA<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

If this new discovery is confirmed, it would add 352 more binary system candidates to the list of asteroids with moons, nearly doubling the known number of asteroids with moons.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asteroids are fascinating objects and contain unique clues about the formation and evolution of the solar system. Binary asteroid systems are even more fascinating, allowing us to study how different bodies form, collide, and interact in space.<\/span><\/p>\n

With its unique all-sky scanning capabilities, Gaia has made a number of important asteroid discoveries since its launch in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

In its data release 3, Gaia accurately determined the positions and motions of more than 150,000 asteroids\u2014so accurately that scientists were able to dig deeper and look for asteroids that exhibited a characteristic \u201cwobble\u201d caused by the tug of an orbiting companion (a mechanism common in binary stars). Gaia also collected data on the asteroids\u2019 chemistry, compiling the largest collection ever of asteroid \u201creflectance spectra\u201d (light curves that reveal an object\u2019s color and composition).<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nAsteroids in Gaia data release 3. ESA<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

More than 150,000 orbits determined in the Gaia 3 data release were refined and made 20 times more accurate in the Focused Product release last year. More asteroid orbits are expected in the upcoming Gaia 4 data release (not expected until mid-2026).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGaia has proven itself to be an outstanding asteroid explorer and is working hard to uncover the secrets of space both in and beyond our Solar System,\u201d said Timo Prusti, Gaia Project Scientist at ESA. \u201cThis discovery highlights that each Gaia data release is a major step forward in improving the quality of the data and demonstrates the amazing new science that has been made possible by this mission.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

ESA will continue to study the binary asteroids with the upcoming Hera mission, scheduled to launch later this year. Hera will be a follow-up to NASA’s DART mission, which encountered Dimorphos, a moon orbiting the asteroid Didymos, in 2022 as an asteroid deflection test to conduct a post-impact survey of Dimorphos. It will be the first probe to encounter a binary asteroid system.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n20 times more accurate: Gaia maps more than 150,000 asteroid orbits. ESA<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Gaia helped astronomers see the shadow cast by Didymos as it passed in front of more distant stars in 2022, an observation method known as stellar occultation. The feasibility of this method has been dramatically improved by Gaia\u2019s asteroid orbits and ultra-precise star maps in recent years, proving the mission\u2019s enormous value to solar system exploration.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Binary Asteroid Candidates in Gaia DR3 Astrometry” by Liberato et al. (2024) accepted for publication 8 August 2024 in Astronomy & Astrophysics. doi.org\/10.1051\/0004-6361\/202349122<\/span><\/p>\n

The European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope was launched on 19 December 2013 and has been observing the sky since 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European Space Agency’s Gaia star-gazing mission has once again proven its ability to explore asteroids, discovering potential moons around more than 350 asteroids that are not known to have moons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[545,543,40],"tags":[315,822,308,821,355],"class_list":{"0":"post-1748","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-deepspace","8":"category-solar-system","9":"category-kosmos","10":"tag-asteroid","11":"tag-binary-systems","12":"tag-esa","13":"tag-gaia","14":"tag-satellite"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1750,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions\/1750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}