Asteroid From Another Star System Found Orbiting Wrong Way Near Jupiter (theguardian.com)

Astronomers have spotted an asteroid orbiting our sun in the opposite (retrograde) direction to the planets. The 2-mile-wide asteroid, known as 2015 BZ509, is the first "interstellar immigrant" from beyond our solar system to remain, according to the study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The Guardian reports: Further work on the asteroid revealed it takes the same length of time to orbit the sun as the planet Jupiter at a similar average distance, although in the opposite direction and with a different shaped path, suggesting the two have gravitational interactions. But unpicking quite where the asteroid came from was challenging. Asteroids that orbit the sun on paths that take them between the giant planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- are known as centaurs, and it is thought that many might come from distant bands of material within the solar system such as the scattered disk or the Oort cloud. Several, like BZ509, are known to have retrograde paths, although how they ended up on such orbits is unclear.

But there was a clue there was something unusual about BZ509: while previous studies suggested retrograde centaurs stay gravitationally "tied" to planets for 10,000 years at most, recent work had suggested this asteroid's orbit had been linked to Jupiter for far longer, probably as a result of the planet's mass and the way both take the same time to orbit the sun. The discovery provides vital clues as to the asteroid's origins. [Dr Fathi Namouni from the Observatory de la Cote d'Azur said] that the model suggests the most likely explanation is that the asteroid was captured by Jupiter as it hurtled through the solar system from interstellar space. "It means it is an alien to the solar system," he said.

Comments

So let's send a probe

[Zorpheus]

In any space game this unusual object would certainly be an important artifact.
In reality it would still be quite interesting to analyse its composition.

Re:So let's send a probe

[thomst]

Zorpheus observed:

In any space game this unusual object would certainly be an important artifact.

In reality it would still be quite interesting to analyse its composition.

I don't disagree about the scientific importance of this body. OTOH, "send a probe" is a non-trivial undertaking, when that probe will have to overcome the Earth's orbital velocity, then further accelerate to the orbital velocity of this retrograde object.

That's a helluva lot of delta vee.

I'm not saying it's impossible. Taking advantage of carefully-calculated gravitational slingshot trajectories ought to permit it - but it's going to take a more powerful launch system than currently exists, regardless. So we're talking about needing the SLS, or SpaceX's BFR, or Blue Origin's New Glenn booster to make it happen.

The first one won't be operational until no earlier than 2026 (assuming it hits its development schedule, which I don't think is at all a safe assumption). New Glenn might be launch-ready by, say, 2022 or so. Or it might not. The BFR? I'm guessing late 2020 at the earliest. And all three of those systems will have a LONG list of payloads lined up ahead of any at-this-point-theoretical probe to this admittedly-interesting destination - for which there's certainly no room in NASA's budget at the moment.

New, multiple-billion-dollar, 10-year or more NASA projects don't just appear AIBFM - and the current Congress seems to have little appetite for pure science projects. Or were you expecting the ESA, Roscsmos, or the CNSA to tackle it?

Because I don't think any one of them has the capability. Or the mandate ...