Discovery of Vesta Analogues among Near-Earth Objects

It is commonly agreed that most of near--Earth asteroids (NEAs) originate from the main asteroid belt, through a complex dynamical evolution involving the major dynamical resonances. However it is not easy to obtain reliable hints on the origin and following dynamical evolution pertaining to every individual near--Earth body. The evolution within the resonant regions, which is typically chaotic, and the possible close encounters with one or more of the inner planets usually destroy every significant memory of the original orbit. Only in the rare cases in which the spin vector is known, it may be used to evaluate the probability of having the body come from either of the main resonant channels (3:1 or nu6). Thus the most relevant and commonly available information on the possible origin comes out from the spectroscopic observations and taxonomic assessment. In this work we report the observations of four NEAs showing, for the first time, a striking spectroscopic similarity with the main belt (MB) asteroid 4 Vesta, which we can safely identify as their parent body.