The main topic of my research is on the dynamics of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). During the Stardust-reloaded project I focused on the long-term dynamics of NEAs. In [10] developed a model for the computation of proper elements of NEAs in a mean-motion resonance, and in [12] I used proper elements to locate secular resonances in the near-Earth region. Proper elements can be used also to find associations between NEAs and meteorites, as in [14].

I also developed a modified version of the OrbFit and mercury N-body codes, including the combined action of the Yarkovsky and YORP effects (see [9]), that can be used for statistical studies on the dynamics of small asteroids. With this software I analyzed how the long-term dynamics of (469219) Kamo'oalewa – the target of a future Chinese mission – depends on the Yarkovsky effect [6].

In [5] I developed a statistical method to study the thermal properties of the super-fast rotator (499998) 2011PT, which is based on the comparison between the measured and the model-predicted Yarkovsky effect. Results showed a surprisingly low thermal inertia (see Figure 1), lower than that of Bennu and Ryugu, with a very high probability.

The D-NEAs project, which is based on the preliminary work on 2011 PT, aims to further develop new methods for the physical characterization of near-Earth asteroids, that rely mostly on ground-based observations. In the paper [15] we presented our publicly available software ASTERIA. In [18] we presented our results on asteroid Didymos.

The D-NEAs project is carried on by myself, Bojan Novaković, and Dušan Marčeta from the Astronomy Department of the University of Belgrade. The project was awarded with the Planetary Society STEP grant 2021.

Together with Albino Carbognani from the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) we studied the possible origin of meteorites directly from the NEA population. 

By using numerical simulations, in [14] we found 12 meteorites that are possibly linked to known NEAs, which may have been originated through a small collision on the proposed parent body. 

Further clues that some meteorites may originate directly in the near-Earth space from micro-meteoroids collisions on small NEAs are given by the results of the impact of the DART spacecraft on Dimorphos. In fact, meter-size boulders ejected from Dimorphos were imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. In [17] we simulated the long-term dynamics of these boulders, and found that they could eventually reach the surface of Mars. The same mechanism applies to NEAs that cross the orbit of Earth.

Meteorites are also of great value for planetary science research, and it is important to recover them from the ground. An important source of meteorites are small asteroids that are discovered by telescopic images few hours before impact, the so called imminent impactors. In [21] we demonstrated that strewn fields computed from heliocentric orbital data are still a valuable resource for meteorite search on the ground.

During my Ph.D period I studied the existence of periodic orbits of the N-body problem with equal masses, using variational and numerical methods. Variational methods permit to prove the existence of periodic orbits with special symmetries, while numerical methods permit to actually compute such orbits and study additional properties, such as their stability.

In [1] I applied rigorous numerical techniques to produce a computer-assisted proof of the instability of particular periodic solutions of the N-body problem with equal masses, and some computations can be found here.

In [2] I used numerical methods to compute symmetric periodic orbits in the Coulomb (1+N)-body problem, that is strictly related to the gravitational N-body problem. The computations performed for this paper can be found here.

In [4] I used variational techniques to prove the existence of periodic orbits of the (1+N)-body problem, and used the Gamma-convergence theory to study their asymptotic properties. Additional computations of this work can be found here.

In [8] I used numerical method to compute the bifurcations of the collinear configuration of the 3-body problem viewed as a balanced configuration. Additional material of this paper can be found here.