Asteroid Orbit Computation

During the last decade, orbit computation has evolved from a deterministic pursuit to a statistical one. Its development has been spurred by the advent of the World Wide Web and by the greatly increased rate of asteroid astrometric observation. Several new solutions to the inverse problem of orbit computation have been devised, including linear, semilinear, and nonlinear methods. They have been applied to a number of problems related to asteroids’ computed skyplane or spatial uncertainty, such as recovery/precovery, identification, optimization of search strategies, and Earth collision probability. The future looks very bright. For example, the provision of milliarcsec-accuracy astrometry from spacecraft will allow the modeling of asteroid shape, spin, and surface-scattering properties. The development of deep, widefield surveys will mandate the almost complete automation of the orbit computation process, to the extent that one will be able to transform astrometric data into a desired output product, such as an ephemeris, without the intermediary of orbital elements.

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