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First Asteroid Discovered At Uranus's Leading Trojan Point
LeadSongDog writes "Space.com is reporting on a 60km comet-like body in Lagrangian orbit around the Sun, locked to Uranus's leading Trojan Point. This means a distant, but fairly accessible supply of water-ice, hence: reaction mass, hydrogen and oxygen for robotic miners if we can just get them there with an energy source. 'The sun and Earth have two Trojan points, one leading ahead of Earth, known as the L-4 point of the system, and one trailing behind, its L-5 point. The sun and other planets have Lagrangian points also, with asteroids seen at those the sun shares with Jupiter, Neptune and Mars. Scientists thought the Trojan points of Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, were too unstable to host asteroids."
The trojan points are only meta-stable anyway. So for people to say that they thought the leading trojan point of Uranus was too unstable to capture an asteroid isn't thinking clearly. When was it captured? Last year? When will it leave the trojan point? In two weeks? They need to think about what "stable" and "unstable" mean in cosmological time. It can be unstable but still last in that configuration well past the time you and I die.
Does that mean that Uranus has not "cleared its orbit" of other objects? (That being one of the IAU's criteria for planet-hood)
No, on the contrary, it means Uranus has cleared it's orbit, any rocks that remain are in Lagrange points and 100% controlled by Uranus.