Debiased albedo distribution for Near Earth Objects

Abstract

We extend the most recent orbital – absolute magnitude Near Earth Object (NEO) model (Granvik et al., 2018) to provide a statistical description of NEO geometric albedos. Our model is calibrated on NEOWISE albedo data for the NEO population and reproduces these data very well once a simple model for the NEOWISE observational biases is applied. The results are consistent with previous estimates. There are ~1000 NEOs with diameter D > 1 km and the mean albedo to convert absolute magnitude into diameter is 0.147. We don't find any statistically significant evidence that the albedo distribution of NEOs depends on NEO size. Instead, we find evidence that the disruption of NEOs at small perihelion distances found in Granvik et al. (2016) occurs preferentially for dark NEOs. The interval between km-sized bodies striking the Earth should occur on average once every 750,000 years. Low and high albedo NEOs are well mixed in orbital space, but a trend remains with higher albedo objects being at smaller semimajor axes and lower albedo objects more likely found at larger semimajor axes.