Earth's temporarily-captured natural satellites - The first step towards utilization of asteroid resources

Abstract

Granvik et al. (2012) predict that the Earth is surrounded by a cloud of small temporarily-captured asteroids. These temporarily-captured orbiters (TCOs) originate in the near-Earth-object (NEO) population and are temporarily captured in the potential well of the Earth-Moon system (EMS). Granvik et al. (2012) predict that the largest object in orbit around Earth at any given moment (other than the Moon) has a diameter D ~1 m (Sect. 6.2). The number of TCOs is inversely proportional to their size such that there are on the order of 103 0.1-meter-diameter TCOs in orbit around Earth at any given time.