Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz

Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz
University of Colorado Boulder | CUB · Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences (AES)

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18
Publications
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118
Citations

Publications

Publications (18)
Article
The near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 2024 PT5 is on an Earth-like orbit that remained in Earth's immediate vicinity for several months at the end of 2024. PT5's orbit is challenging to populate with asteroids originating from the main belt and is more commonly associated with rocket bodies mistakenly identified as natural objects or with debris ejected fr...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) 2024 PT5 is on an Earth-like orbit which remained in Earth's immediate vicinity for several months at the end of 2024. PT5's orbit is challenging to populate with asteroids originating from the Main Belt and is more commonly associated with rocket bodies mistakenly identified as natural objects or with debris ejected f...
Article
Full-text available
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft impacted Dimorphos, the natural satellite of (65803) Didymos, on 2022 September 26, as a first successful test of kinetic impactor technology for deflecting a potentially hazardous object in space. The experiment resulted in a small change to the dynamical state of the Didymos system consist...
Article
Full-text available
Among binary asteroids, (35107) 1991VH stands out as unique given the likely chaotic rotation within its secondary component. The source of this excited dynamical state is unknown. In this work, we demonstrate that a past close encounter with Earth could have provided the necessary perturbation to allow the natural internal dynamics, characterized...
Preprint
Full-text available
Among binary asteroids, (35107) 1991VH stands out as unique given the likely chaotic rotation within its secondary component. The source of this excited dynamical state is unknown. In this work we demonstrate that a past close encounter with Earth could have provided the necessary perturbation to allow the natural internal dynamics, characterized b...
Article
Full-text available
We characterize asteroid (16) Psyche using high-precision astrometry, including the recent Gaia Focused Product Release. The gravitational perturbations of Psyche on other asteroids can be observable in the case of mutual encounters. Using a least squares approach, we estimate the mass of Psyche by fitting astrometric data of asteroids that come wi...
Article
Full-text available
The Gaia mission has provided astrometric observations of unprecedented accuracy for more than 156,000 asteroids. The reported astrometric uncertainties are of the order of milliarcseconds, about 2 orders of magnitude smaller than that of traditional ground-based observations. The accuracy of Gaia data requires a high-fidelity orbit determination p...
Article
Full-text available
NASAʼs Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was the first to demonstrate asteroid deflection, and the missionʼs Level 1 requirements guided its planetary defense investigations. Here, we summarize DARTʼs achievement of those requirements. On 2022 September 26, the DART spacecraft impacted Dimorphos, the secondary member of the Didymos ne...
Article
Full-text available
With the successful impact of the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft in the Didymos–Dimorphos binary asteroid system, we provide an initial analysis of the post-impact perturbed binary asteroid dynamics. To compare our simulation results with observations, we introduce a set of “observable elements” calculated using only the ph...
Preprint
Full-text available
With the successful impact of the NASA DART spacecraft in the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid system, we provide an initial analysis of the post-impact perturbed binary asteroid dynamics. To compare our simulation results with observations, we introduce a set of "observable elements" calculated using only the physical separation of the binary ast...
Article
Full-text available
The catalog of km-sized near-Earth objects (NEOs) is nearly complete. Typical impact monitoring analyses search for possible impacts over the next 100 yr and none of the km-sized objects represent an impact threat over that time interval. Assessing the impact risk over longer timescales is a challenge since orbital uncertainties grow. To overcome t...
Preprint
Full-text available
The catalog of km-sized near-Earth objects (NEOs) is nearly complete. Typical impact monitoring analyses search for possible impacts over the next 100 years and none of the km-sized objects represent an impact threat over that time interval. Assessing the impact risk over longer time scales is a challenge since orbital uncertainties grow. To overco...
Article
Full-text available
The propagation of small bodies in the solar system is driven by the combination of planetary encounters that cause abrupt changes in their orbits and secular long-term perturbations. We propose a propagation strategy that combines both of these effects into a single framework for long-term, rapid propagation of small bodies in the inner solar syst...
Preprint
Full-text available
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft is planned to impact the natural satellite of (65803) Didymos, Dimorphos, around 23:14 UTC on 26 September 2022, causing a reduction in its orbital period that will be measurable with ground-based observations. This test of kinetic impactor technology will provide the first estimate of the m...
Preprint
Full-text available
The propagation of small bodies in the Solar system is driven by the combination of planetary encounters that cause abrupt changes in their orbits and secular long-term perturbations. We propose a propagation strategy that combines both of these effects into a single framework for long-term, rapid propagation of small bodies in the inner Solar Syst...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
During close encounters asteroids can cross keyholes, regions in the vicinity of a planet that lead to a future collision. The location of keyholes in resonant encounters can be computed analytically on the B-plane[1]. If an asteroid crosses a keyhole, the close encounter geometry will repeat itself after the corresponding integer amount of years....

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