2010 TK7 is a sub-kilometer
near-Earth asteroid and the first
Earth trojan discovered; it precedes
Earth in its
orbit around the
Sun.
[5][6] Trojan objects are most easily conceived as orbiting at a
Lagrangian point, a dynamically stable location (where the combined
gravitational force acts through the Sun's and Earth's
barycenter) 60 degrees ahead of or behind a massive orbiting body, in a type of 1:1
orbital resonance. In reality, they oscillate (
librate) around such a point. Such objects had previously been observed in the orbits of
Mars,
Jupiter,
Neptune, and the
Saturnian moons Tethys and
Dione.
2010 TK7 has a diameter of about 300 meters (1,000 ft).
[4] Its path oscillates about the Sun–Earth
L4 Lagrangian point (60 degrees ahead of Earth), shuttling between its closest approach to
Earth and its closest approach to the
L3 point (180 degrees from Earth).
The asteroid was discovered in October 2010 by the NEOWISE team of astronomers using
NASA's
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).
[7]