11 thousand new asteroids found in the solar system

The Vera Rubin Observatory has not yet switched to full-fledged operation, but it has already managed to significantly expand the catalog of minor bodies in the Solar System. According to preliminary data, astronomers have discovered more than 11,000 new asteroids in a month and a half of observations. The International Center for Minor Planets at the International Astronomical Union has already confirmed these results — this is the largest single batch of such discoveries over the past year.

The package that was submitted for confirmation included about a million observations. These include not only new objects but also more than 80 thousand already known asteroids whose orbits have been refined. Some of them had previously been virtually «lost» — due to inaccurate trajectory calculations, their position in the sky could no longer be predicted. The new data allowed us to return these bodies to the working catalogs.

The new findings include 33 previously unknown near-Earth objects. This group includes asteroids and comets approaching the Sun at a distance no more than 1.3 times the Earth’s orbit. None of the newly discovered objects is dangerous to the Earth. The largest of them is about 500 meters across. Astronomers are particularly attentive to bodies larger than 140 meters, because if they fall, they can cause serious regional destruction. To date, only about 40% of such medium-sized near-Earth objects have been detected.

Once the observatory is fully operational, it can significantly change these statistics. Rubin is expected to discover about 90,000 new near-Earth objects, including potentially hazardous ones. If the forecast comes true, the share of known bodies larger than 140 meters will almost double to about 70% of the expected total. For planetary defense, such surveys are especially important: the earlier an object is detected, the more time is left to refine the orbit and assess the risk.

The results for the far reaches of the Solar System were equally interesting. The new data revealed about 380 trans-Neptunian objects — icy bodies moving in orbits farther than Neptune. Two of them, tentatively designated 2025 LS2 and 2025 MX348, have particularly elongated orbits: at the farthest points of their trajectory, they are about a thousand times further away from the Sun than the Earth. By this measure, both bodies are among the 30 most distant minor planets known today.

These results were made possible by the technical advantages of the observatory: a large mirror, the world’s most powerful digital astronomical camera, and software capable of detecting faint and fast-moving objects against a congested sky. The observatory scans the southern sky about 6 times more sensitively than most current asteroid search programs. In less than 2 months, Rubin has found 380 trans-Neptunian candidates — while over the previous 3 decades, astronomers have discovered only about 5,000 such bodies.

After the start of the full ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, the observatory is projected to discover new asteroids every day at a rate of several thousand per week. The total number of known asteroids could triple, and the catalog of trans-Neptunian objects could grow by almost an order of magnitude. Distant objects also help to study the early history of the Solar System and look for indirect signs of a hypothetical ninth major planet that has not yet been directly detected.