Assessment of the Gaussian Covariance Approximation over an Earth-Asteroid Encounter Period

Abstract: In assessing the risk an asteroid may pose to the Earth, the asteroids state is often predicted for many years, often decades. Only by accounting for the asteroids initial state uncertainty can a measure of the risk be calculated. With the asteroids state uncertainty growing as a function of the initial velocity uncertainty, orbit velocity at the last state update, and the time from the last update to the epoch of interest, the asteroids position uncertainties can grow to many times the size …