This would serve as a precursor for additional future robotic and human exploration targets. By surveying the region, a zeroth-order approximation of the number of objects could be obtained with some rough constraints on their diameters, which may lead to the identification of potential candidates for further study. By exploring a wide field area, a small spacecraft equipped with an IR camera could hunt for Trojan asteroids and other Earth co-orbiting objects at the L4 or L5 Lagrange points in the near-term. To investigate these Earth Trojan asteroid objects, it is both essential and feasible to send spacecraft to these regions. The presence of objects in the Sun-Earth L4 and L5 Lagrange points has long been suspected, and in 2010 NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) detected a 300 m object. This could lead to future missions for larger precursor spacecraft as well as human missions. By sending a small spacecraft to the Sun-Earth L4 or L5 Lagrange points to investigate near- Earth objects, Earth's Trojan population can be better understood. Investigations of Earth's Trojan asteroids will have benefits for science, exploration, and resource utilization. Investigating Trojan Asteroids at the L4/L5 Sun-Earth Lagrange Points Crossings of the regions by the trajectory are described, and the requirements for detecting the presence of 1 km sized asteroids are presented and shown to be attainable. The regions in which stable orbits associated with the earth and with Venus may lie are estimated to be a thin and tadpole-shaped area extending from 35 deg to 100 deg from the planet. The type of trajectory suggested lies in the ecliptic plane and has a period of 5/6 years and a perihelion at the Venus orbital distance. The possibility is suggested of investigating the existence of small, as-yet undiscovered, asteroids orbiting in the solar system near the earth-sun or Venus- sun stable Lagrange points by means of a spacecraft which traverses these regions. The paper presents estimated values for the relevant quantities and discusses the feasibility of the project analyzing the behavior of the space devices close to the Lagrange points.Ī suggested trajectory for a Venus- sun, earth-sun Lagrange points mission, Vela Performing time of flight measurements of electromagnetic signals traveling on closed paths between the points, we show that it would be possible: (a) to refine gravitational time delay knowledge due both to the Sun and the Earth (b) to detect the gravito-magnetic frame dragging of the Sun, so deducing information about the interior of the star (c) to check the possible existence of a galactic gravitomagnetic field, which would imply a revision of the properties of a dark matter halo (d) to set up a relativistic positioning and navigation system at the scale of the inner solar system. We illustrate the proposal, nicknamed LAGRANGE, to use spacecraft, located at the Sun-Earth Lagrange points, as a physical reference frame. How to use the Sun-Earth Lagrange points for fundamental physics and navigation
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