Prediction for close approaches with terrestrial planets of asteroids from the main belt

Abstract

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), a special subset of Near-Earth Objects, are both dangerous and scientifically valuable. PHAs that truly undergo close approaches with the Earth (dubbed CAPHAs) are of particular interest and extensively studied. The concept and study of CAPHA can be extended to other Solar system planets, which have significant implications for future planet-based observations and explorations. In this work, we conduct numerical simulations that incorporate the Yarkovsky effect to study the transformation of main belt asteroids into CAPHAs of terrestrial planets, using precise nominal timesteps, especially to ensure the reliability of the results for Mercury and Venus. Our simulations predict a total of 1893 Mercury-CAPHAs, 3014 Venus-CAPHAs, 3791 Earth-CAPHAs and 18066 Mars-CAPHAs, with an occurrence frequency of about 1, 9, 15 and 66 per year, respectively. The values for Mars-CAPHAs are consistent with our previous work, which were based on simulations with a larger nominal timestep. The predicted occurrence frequency and velocity distribution of Earth-CAPHAs are in reasonable agreement with the observed population of Earth-CAPHAs. We also find that certain asteroids can be caught in close approach with different planets at different times, raising an interesting possibility of using them as transportation between terrestrial planets in the future.