Saturn receives first page of ‘Trojan’ asteroid: May have been stolen

Technology: Saturn has finally joined its fellow Solar System giant planets as a parent to asteroids called “trojans.” But the gas giant, known mostly for its spectacular rings, may have cheated a bit to fit in with its contemporaries, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus.

It seems that Saturn snatched its first known Trojan asteroid, designated 2019 UO14, a few thousand years ago when the space rock was “bouncing” around the Solar System. Additionally, because the orbit of this Saturn trojan is unstable, Saturn seems to be a terrible parent that will lose this cosmic companion in about 1,000 years. That means astronomers will have to get to work, and look for more asteroids that share an orbit with the sixth planet from the sun. That is, if Saturn wants to stick with its fellow gas giants and ice giants. In fact, there are trojans even on smaller terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars.

“We think it’s about 9 miles (15 kilometers) wide and, although its composition is unknown, it likely originated from the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune,” discovery team member Paul Wiegert, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario, told Space.com. “The trojan asteroid was in the process of being ‘bouncing’ off course due to the gravity between the giant planets when it got snared by Saturn.”

Trojan asteroids are space rocks that share a planet’s orbit, either ahead of or behind the planet, Wiegert explained. These asteroids typically sit at an average distance of about 60 degrees from the planet, as seen from the vantage point of the sun. “With the discovery of 2019 UO14, all the gas giant planets are now known to have trojan asteroids,” he said. “Only Mercury and Venus still have undetected trojans.”