For the last twenty years, NASA has concentrated on locating 90% of near-Earth objects that might threaten our planet. The space agency has made consistent advancements in identifying hazardous asteroids that travel close to Earth. Nevertheless, new revelations imply we might have been neglecting a concealed danger in an unexpected location: Venus.
Astronomers have found a cluster of asteroids that co-orbit with Venus, moving around the Sun on similar trajectories. These bodies are hard to identify due to their frequent positioning in the Sun’s glare from our perspective on Earth. Yet, they are potentially perilous, particularly when their orbits bring them close to our planet.
In a recent study spearheaded by researchers at São Paulo University, scientists employed simulations to explore the behavior of these asteroids and assess their potential for colliding with Earth. While their orbits keep them relatively stable alongside Venus, some still traverse within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth’s orbit.
This places them in the realm of potentially hazardous asteroids, especially if they exceed 140 meters in diameter. One of the major difficulties in monitoring these space rocks is their unpredictable motion.
Due to their chaotic orbits, astronomers cannot depend on a single observation to forecast their future trajectories. In fact, their behavior becomes unreliable just 150 years ahead. To address this, the team generated simulated replicas of known co-orbital asteroids and monitored them for millennia using computer modeling.
Their results indicated that several low-eccentricity asteroids—those with nearly circular trajectories—could pose a genuine threat to Earth. Unfortunately, these are also the hardest to detect. The forthcoming Vera Rubin Observatory is expected to assist in identifying some of them, but its observations will be restricted to periods when these objects are positioned away from the Sun.
To enhance detection capabilities, the authors of the study propose initiating a space mission to orbit Venus. A telescope placed near the planet could observe these objects from a more advantageous angle, providing astronomers the best opportunity to locate hidden, hazardous asteroids before they approach too closely.
However, considering the current status of space exploration and Trump’s proposed NASA budget reductions, the likelihood of such a mission occurring in the near future is likely quite low.
