Talk:Asteroid capture

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 August 2020 and 13 November 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): HanGu29, Wsjjsy98, Shuaiqing.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 14:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Plain wrong
This article is plain wrong, or at least misleading. It lets reader believe that an asteroid can orbit if it approaches a planet with the right speed and angle. This is wrong.

Asteroid capture cannot happen unless the asteroid is slowed by something which can be: - The atmosphere (aerocapture) - The gravity of a third body. - An artificial device: bomb, engine... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.67.49.100 (talk) 15:22, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

The following footnote was removed because it is completely false and the opposite of the truth: "This situation arises because the Sun's gravity is much stronger than the gravity of any planet, so that orbits around the Sun, broadly speaking, correspond to much higher energies and hence much higher typical orbital speeds. In principle, an asteroid in an extremely eccentric elliptical orbit around the Sun which encounters a planet close to the asteroid's solar apoapsis (the orbital position of greatest distance and hence least speed) might be travelling slowly enough to be captured by the planet's gravity, but this coincidence is quite unlikely to arise."

The problem with the footnote is that the more eccentric the asteroid's orbit, the greater the difference between its speed at aphelion and the planet's orbital speed. Normalising velocities so that the planet's orbital speed is 1, the asteroid's orbital speed is 1 if the asteroid co-orbits with the planet; nearly 0 if the asteroid's orbit is very, very eccentric and it meets the planet at its own aphelion; 1.4142 if the asteroid's orbit is very, very eccentric and it meets the planet at its own perihelion. That makes the relative speed 0, 1, and 0.4142 respectively. Thus the footnote's scenario maximises the asteroid's speed relative to the planet instead of minimising it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JoeBruno (talk • contribs) 11:43, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

New to Wikipedia
I haven't used this before. But I was thinking of adding something about how in the news this morning there was an article about some billionaires. They were talking about capturing asteriods and mining them for more money. I was wondering if anyone found that interesting,and if you would like to help me with finding information on the subject. If you would, that would be awesome. Lizcolaizzi (talk) 16:24, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Questions
Are there any sites you would recommend looking at to get new information on asteroid capture? Lizcolaizzi (talk) 23:47, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Edits.
I made some edits to the detailed explanation of asteroid capture. What I did was change the way some of the way things were worded to make it easier for other people to read. I also added three new sections to the page titled : Why Capture and Asteroid, How to Capture an Asteroid, and Interesting Facts. I added these topics because I think that they will really help people who are interested int he topic understand it much easier. I believe that I wrote the paragraphs in a way that is easy for all people to understand.Lizcolaizzi (talk) 00:34, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Citations...
How do I do a citation in Wikipedia?Lizcolaizzi (talk) 00:37, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Try and read REF. Arcandam (talk) 00:39, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. (:Lizcolaizzi (talk) 16:17, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

fusion with mining
http://kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_report.pdf

if you are interested, you could resume this study and find a way to fusion it with the asteroid mining page, its the same subject

possible merge with /Asteroid_Retrieval_and_Utilization ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Retrieval_and_Utilization seems to discuss similar topics.

Additionally, that page is merging with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_Mission_2. 7yl4r (talk) 12:57, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, this "Asteroid Capture" article is a mix of two entirely separate topics. Topic #1 is natural science, how a planet like Mars came to have natural satellites like Phobos and Deimos. Topic #2 is engineering futurism, how and why people might retrieve asteroids.

IMHO, all topic-2 elements should be stripped off of here and inserted elsewhere (such as the suggestion above, if not already duplicative). Perhaps a related-article link can be left in place of the removed text to shield against further OT creep. Disambiguation might also help. Jeffryfisher (talk) 14:40, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Aerodynamics a wild card?
Comets and asteroids not massive enough to become spherical via their own gravity would have irregular shapes. While interacting with atmospheres at high velocities, their aerodynamic qualities could fluctuate rapidly and unpredictably. Ablation could also change their shapes unpredictably. All this would seem to affect trajectories. Has this been sufficiently analyzed? LADave (talk) 17:50, 5 May 2017 (UTC)