COSMIC SWEET SPOTS
No Comments
COSMIC SWEET SPOTS
TOPIC: Science & Tech
Context- It is easier and cheaper to launch rockets from cosmic sweet spots.
Concept-
- A sweet Spot is an optimum point or combination of factors or qualities.
- There are two such sweet spots — the second was discovered only recently.
- They are ‘Trojan asteroids’.
- These kinds of asteroids travel alongside a planet in its journey around the sun. A fellow-traveller, a hamsafar!
- The second Earth Trojan asteroid, named 2020XL5, was discovered in late 2020, but confirmed only recently.
- 2020XL5 is about 1.2 km across — thrice as big as the first Earth Trojan asteroid, named 2010TK7.
- Both the Earth Trojan asteroids sit at the Lagrange point 4 (L-4), which is one of the five spots of equilibrium between the Earth and the sun
- a Lagrange point between two bodies is where an object remains stable, and won’t drift away, because it is pulled with equal force by the two bodies.
Asteroids:
- An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System.
- Asteroids are difficult to find because they are small and typically don’t reflect much light (low albedo).
- Larger asteroids are often called planetoids.
- Asteroids are somewhat arbitrarily differentiated from comets and meteoroids.
- In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition: while asteroids are mainly composed of mineral and rock, comets are primarily composed of dust and ice. Furthermore, asteroids formed closer to the sun.
- The difference between asteroids and meteoroids is mainly one of size: meteoroids have a diameter of one meter or less, whereas asteroids have a diameter of greater than one meter.