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Milani, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Milani, A..

5 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2001

Quantifying the risk posed by potential Earth impacts

Predictions of future potential Earth impacts by near-Earth objects (NEOs) have become commonplace in recent years, and the rate of these detections is likely to accelerate as asteroid survey efforts continue to mature. In this paper we describe the metrics introduced, and we give numerous examples of their application. This enables us to establish in rough terms the levels at which events become interesting to various parties.

asteroid impact hazard↗
NASA NTRS1990

Statistics of close approaches between asteroids and planets - Project Spaceguard

A data base of close approaches to the major planets has been generated via numerical integrations for a large number of planet-crossing asteroid orbits over the course of 200,000 yr; these data are then applied to such statistical theories as those of Kessler (1981) and Wetherill (1967). Attention is given to the orbits of the Toro-class asteroids, which violate the assumption of a lack of mean motion resonance locking between target planet and asteroid. A modified form of the Kessler theory is proposed which can address the problem of approaches between orbits that are either nearly coplanar or nearly tangent. A correlation analysis is used to test the assumption that the orbital elements of a planet-crossing orbit change solely due to close approaches.

Milani, A.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Dynamics of Pluto

The present study of the Pluto orbit yielded by the LONGSTOP 1B, 100-Myr numerical integration of the outer planets has given attention to the 3:2 resonance in mean motion with Neptune up to degree 2 in eccentricities and inclinations. Confirmations are obtained for both the 19,900-year period longitudinal libration and the 3.78-Myr period libration of the Pluto pericenter argument. Because chaos originates with small divisors, possible resonances have been searched for among the frequencies associated with the critical arguments. The macroscopic stability of the orbit of Pluto is explainable in terms of the association of high-order resonances with small chaotic regions.

Milani, A.↗