Within green circle is the asteroid
NASA confirmed yesterday that they have detected and verified a “trojan asteroid” which accompanies Earth around its orbit of the sun. It was discovered by the WISE telescope which orbits above us in space. The WISE telescope is funded by NASA.
Having never heard of a trojan-anything in space, after researching what one is, it is something which orbits a larger body (in this case, the asteroid orbiting Earth) which maintains a constant orbit either behind or in front. Basically, it does not circle around the larger body in its orbit, it remains fixed in a ‘static’ location.
This means that Earth does not have to worry of the asteroid landing in an ocean and causing massive tsunami’s, or as an other example, falling on top of New York City or other areas of prominence.
Regarding instances of trojan asteroids throughout our immediate solar system, turns out there are several cases but are not given much attention. NASA says that there are trojan asteroids in orbit around Neptune, Mars and Jupiter. Furthermore, they say there are two trojan asteroids that orbit around a couple of Saturn’s moons, too.
Touching on just why we are now seeing Earth’s first trojan asteroid, Martin Connors of Athabasca University in Canada said “These asteroids dwell mostly in the daylight, making them very hard to see.” Connors was the lead author of a new paper on the discovery in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature. “But we finally found one, because the object has an unusual orbit that takes it farther away from the sun than what is typical for Trojans. WISE was a game-changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth’s surface.”
Additionally, NASA says that the asteroid has a diameter of around 300 meters.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA