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In astronomy, a trojan is a small celestial body (mostly asteroids) that shares the orbit of a larger body, remaining in a stable orbit approximately 60° ahead of or behind the main body near one of its Lagrangian points L 4 and L 5. Trojans can share the orbits of planets or of large moons. Trojans are one type of co-orbital object.
Asteroids in the leading (L 4) orbit are named after Greek heroes (the "Greek node or camp" or "Achilles group"), and those at the trailing (L 5) orbit are named after the heroes of Troy (the "Trojan node or camp"). [2] The asteroids 617 Patroclus and 624 Hektor were named before the Greece/Troy rule was devised, resulting in a "Greek spy ...
An Earth trojan is an asteroid that orbits the Sun in the vicinity of the Earth–Sun Lagrange points L 4 (leading 60°) or L 5 (trailing 60°), thus having an orbit similar to Earth's. Only two Earth trojans have so far been discovered.
In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw, ... There are about 7,000 Trojan asteroids, and the largest is 160 miles (257 ...
NASA has blasted a spacecraft, traveling at speeds up to 92,000 mph, to the most mysterious asteroids in our solar system.Called the Trojan asteroids, they are trapped in two swarms — one in ...
There are few asteroids beyond 4.2 AU, until Jupiter's orbit. At the latter the two families of Trojan asteroids can be found, which, at least for objects larger than 1 km, are approximately as numerous as the asteroids of the asteroid belt. [103]
NASA's Lucy mission will be the agency's first study of a group of Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. The Lucy spacecraft is set to launch next month from Cape Canaveral.
2010 TK 7 was at the near-Earth end of its tadpole in 2010–2011, [4] which facilitated its discovery. 2010 TK 7 's orbit has a chaotic character, making long-range predictions difficult. Prior to 500 AD, it may have been oscillating about the L 5 Lagrangian point (60 degrees behind Earth), before jumping to L 4 via L 3 .