Origin of multikilometer earth- and mars-crossing asteroids: A quantitative simulation

Science. 1998 Sep 25;281(5385):2022-4. doi: 10.1126/science.281.5385.2022.

Abstract

Orbital dynamic simulations show that many asteroids in the main asteroid belt are driven toward Mars-crossing orbits by numerous weak mean motion resonances, which slowly increase the orbital ellipticity of the asteroids. In addition, half of the Mars-crossing asteroids (MCAs) transition to Earth-crossing asteroids (ECAs) in less than 20 million years. This scenario quantitatively explains the observed number of large ECAs and MCAs.