{"id":41586,"date":"2026-05-04T19:06:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=41586"},"modified":"2026-05-04T19:06:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:06:37","slug":"taxonomic-distribution-of-the-small-near-earth-asteroid-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/?p=41586","title":{"rendered":"Taxonomic Distribution of the Small Near-Earth Asteroid Population<span class=\"badge-status\" style=\"background:#787878\">OPEN ACCESS<\/span>&nbsp;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Thobekile S. Ngwane, Nicolas Erasmus, Paul Groot, Christine Steenkamp, David Trilling and Petro Janse van Rensburg<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Planetary Science Journal, Volume 7, Number 5, Published: 4 May 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/PSJ\/ae5b69\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>LINK (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/iopscience.iop.org\/article\/10.3847\/PSJ\/ae5b69\/pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>PDF (OPEN ACCESS)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"justify-text\">&#8220;Small near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), diameters &lt; 150 m, represent the most numerous yet one of the least well-understood populations among near-Earth objects, despite their potential hazard. Their rapid fading after discovery makes it challenging to obtain sufficient follow-up observations for characterisation studies, leaving a critical gap in our knowledge of their taxonomic distribution. We present results from a robotic follow-up program using the South African Astronomical Observatory\u2019s Lesedi telescope. This system uses automated scripts to rapidly identify NEA discoveries reported to the Minor Planet Center and execute follow-up observations within hours of detection. Using multifilter photometry in the g, r, and i bands, we performed taxonomic classification of 59 small NEAs, with absolute magnitudes H ranging from 22 \u2264 H &lt; 29, using a trained machine learning algorithm. Our results reveal that the composition of the small NEA population slightly differs from the population of larger size, pointing to size-dependent taxonomic variations relevant to impact hazard assessments. Specifically, we find an approximately 1:1 ratio between stony types (S+V+Q) and carbonaceous\/metallic types (C+X), broadly consistent with earlier studies of larger NEAs. However, we identify a significantly higher fraction of X-type asteroids (almost a third of the observed sample) compared to previous taxonomic surveys of larger NEAs. This study provides a compositional analysis of sub-150 m NEAs and suggests that the taxonomic distribution may vary with size, highlighting the importance of dedicated small-object characterization programs to better understand the most abundant, and thus most likely source of Earth impactors.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thobekile S. Ngwane, Nicolas Erasmus, Paul Groot, Christine Steenkamp, David Trilling and Petro Janse van Rensburg The Planetary Science Journal, Volume 7, Number 5, Published: 4 May 2026 LINK (OPEN ACCESS)PDF (OPEN ACCESS) &#8220;Small near-Earth&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,2350,5105,3035,3256,6320],"tags":[1854,1127,3991,2660,2343,1760,4827,5106,1673,498,6319],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41587,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41586\/revisions\/41587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karmaka.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}