🚀 go-pugleaf

Earlier, I wrote:

>> satellites inside the synchronous orbit decay so rapidly (about 10,000
>> years) that we are quite unlikely to catch that happening.

and clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke) replied:

> Synchronous with respect to what?  Asteroidal rotation?  Asteroidal
> revolution about sun?

     Asteroid rotation.  If a prograde satellite is at the synchronous
orbit, it stays over the same spot on its parent asteroid, since its
orbital period is the same as the parent's spin period.  Tidal forces are
zero, so that orbit is highly stable.  Inside the synchronous orbit, the
satellite moves faster than the parent spins, so tidal forces drag on it
and tend to bring it down.  Outside the synchronous orbit the satellite
moves more slowly, tidal forces tend to accelerate it, and it evolves
toward escape.  In small bodies the time scale for tidal evolution is
short.  -|Tom|-

-- 
Tom Van Flandern / Washington, DC / metares@well.sf.ca.us
Meta Research was founded to foster research into ideas not otherwise
supported because they conflict with mainstream theories in Astronomy.