Archiving the Solar System objects of the next GAIA Space mission
by
William Thuillot
IMCCE-Paris Observatory
Coauthors: Magda Stavinschi

The future space astrometric mission GAIA will map the Galaxy in the 2011-2015 period. Global astrometry of billions of astrophysical objects will be performed during this survey. Among them many new Solar System objects, in particular fast moving objects, will be discovered. We thus expect to discover several hundred of thousands of small moving objects. But several problems appear : the need to get a fast identification and to be able to discriminate between the well-known objects and the new ones, the need to quickly compute accurate orbital parameters for these ones in order to be able to identify them in the following observations by GAIA and to avoid their loss. For these goals we propose to carry out actions before the mission, mainly the development of accurate ephemerides of all objects of the solar system, and the set-up of a dedicated network of observers and automatic/robotic stations for observations on alert in the framework of a follow-up program. Archives, data mining and VO facilities will play a fundamental role for these actions.

Date received: March 15, 2005