Letter to the Editor

Yarkovsky effect detection and updated impact hazard assessment for near-Earth asteroid (410777) 2009 FD

¹ Space Dynamics Services s.r.l., Via Mario Giuntini, Navacchio di Cascina, Pisa, Italy
e-mail: delvigna@mail.dm.unipi.it
² Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 5, Pisa, Italy
³ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena 91109, CA, USA
⁴ ESA NEO Coordination Centre, Largo Galileo Galilei, 1, 00044 Frascati, RM, Italy
⁵ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via Frascati, 33, 00040 Monte Porzio Catone, RM, Italy
⁶ Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
⁷ Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, Boulevard de l’Observatoire, Nice, France
⁸ IAPS-INAF, Via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy
⁹ IFAC-CNR, Via Madonna del Piano 10, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy

Received: 12 June 2019
Accepted: 10 July 2019

Abstract

Aims. Near-Earth asteroid (410777) 2009 FD is a potentially hazardous asteroid with possible (though unlikely) impacts on Earth at the end of the twenty-second century. The astrometry collected during the 2019 apparition provides information on the trajectory of (410777) by constraining the Yarkovsky effect, which is the main source of uncertainty for future predictions, and improving the impact hazard assessment.

Methods. We included the Yarkovsky effect in the force model and estimated its magnitude from the fit to the optical and radar astrometric data of (410777). We performed the hazard assessment for (410777) over 200 years using two independent approaches: the NEODyS group adopted a generalisation of the Line Of Variations method in a seven-dimensional space, and the JPL team used the Multi-Layer Clustered Sampling technique.

Results. We obtain a 4σ detection of the Yarkovsky effect acting on (410777), which corresponds to a semimajor axis drift of (3.8 ± 0.9) × 10⁻³ au Myr⁻¹. In the hazard results of both teams, the main impact possibility in 2185 is ruled out and the only remaining one is in 2190, but with a probability lower than 10⁻⁸.