Long-term orbital integration studies of 1998 AK8 and P/ODAS (1998 X1)
G.\ Hahn
DLR, Berlin-Adlershof, Germany
The orbit of the high-inclination, Hungaria-type Mars-crosser 1998 AK8 has been
studied by numerical integration of 10 varied orbits, centered on the current
osculating orbit, using the symplectic integrator SWIFT (Levison and Duncan,
1994) as well as the variable step-size RADAU (RA15) integrator (Everhart,
1985). The integrations were carried out over 10 and 5 million years,
respectively.
The orbital history of the short-period comet P/ODAS was investigated over a
period of +/- 100 year2, using RA15 and a realistic solarsystem model, including
the perturbations by all major planets. The investigations revealed that the
comet recently, in 1995, had a moderately close encounter with Jupiter, which
lowered the comets perihelion, and most likely enabled its discovery on its
first approach in the inner solar system. The past and future orbital evolution will
be discussed in some detail.
A short summary of the OCA-DLR Asteroid Survey (ODAS) will be given.