NEOs.jl: a jet transport-based package for Near-Earth asteroids

NEOs.jl is an open source Near Earth Object orbit determination software package in the Julia programming language. NEOs.jl features exploitation of high-order automatic differentiation techniques, known as jet transport, in order to quantify orbital uncertainties in a versatile, semi-analytical manner. Using NEOs.jl we have estimated the Yarkovsky acceleration acting on the potentially hazardous asteroid Apophis and have ruled out potential impacts on 2036 and 2068.

NEOs.jl is an open source Near Earth Object orbit determination software package in the Julia programming language. It enables high-accuracy orbit determination for near-Earth asteroids and comets from optical and radar astrometry. NEOs.jl features exploitation of high-order automatic differentiation techniques, known as jet transport, in order to quantify orbital uncertainties in a versatile, semi-analytical manner. The optical astrometry error model incorporates state-of-the-art dynamical and observational models, and accounts for biases present in star catalogs, as well as other sources of systematic errors via an appropriate weighting scheme; this considerations are important when dealing with high-precision orbit determinaiton. As part of the development of NEOs.jl, we also implemented a Julia package with our own planetary ephemeris integrator, PlanetaryEphemeris.jl, based on the DE430 planetary and lunar ephemeris dynamical model produced by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Using NEOs.jl we have estimated the Yarkovsky acceleration acting on asteroid Apophis and have ruled out potential impacts on 2036 and 2068. These results were published in the Communications Earth & Environment journal: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00337-x. This is joint work with Dr. Luis Benet (ICF-UNAM) and Luis Eduardo Ramírez Montoya (FC-UNAM).