Three new 'Trojan' asteroids found sharing Neptune's orbit Options

[dilo]

I have impression that this shouldn't be a real danger for NH... Yes, we do not know real population of Neptune Trojans and we never went through such a region but, IMHO, I think isn't worst than go through main asteroid belt as many spacecrafts already safely did.
Anyway, in my understanding we cannot avoid this risk and the only eventual possible precaution I see is to re-orient the spacecraft using HGA antenna as a shield for main spacecraft body. This mill make communications impossible (or at least not continuous) for months, I guess.
Anyway, it would be great to visit a trojans member, but we have to be lucky to find one close enough to original Pluto trajectory (as highlighted by the other Alan...).

[tasp]

The Pioneer spacecraft found less dust in the asteroid belt than elsewhere.

I am not sure if the mechanism that abates the dust there applies to the Neptune Trojans too, but if it does, there should be no fear of that zorching a close flyby of one of those fascinating objects.

[djellison]

Imagine an enormous dusty warehouse.

If one massive industrial vacuum went through the middle...it would end up dustier than an army of tiny dust-buster vacs

Doug

[nprev]

Even if the dust concentration there were say 100 times greater than interplanetary space, I don't think that would pose any hazard to the spacecraft. We're talking really sparse dust population here. Note that Cassini successfully flew through one of the ring "gaps" (granted, with the HGA in ram direction) and had hundreds of thousands of dust particle hits within minutes -- yet it survived. I'm sure any dust clouds (if any) aren't going to be anything near that of a Saturnian ring "gap". IMHO, there's nothing to fear of passage through Neptune's L4 point.

Well, that's good data, ugordan, and I feel a bit better. However, as a Chicken Little/devil's advocate, I'd still like to know more about the following:

1. Estimated number of macro-objects (100m diameter & above) in Neptune's L4, and density of same...not worried about hitting one, just wondering if dust density might be proportional after eons of mutual collision.

2. Estimated efficiency of "cleansing" of Neptune's Trojan points via solar radiation pressure.

All that said, the risk does seem minimal...but would like to see it quantified. Zorching NH is not an option!

[ljk4-1]

Alien Trojans:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0609298