How do we ever manage to connect a small space probe with a small asteroid at large speeds and distances? Like how do we know it’s a small asteroid at distance X versus a slightly larger asteroid at distance Y, etc?
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Two major pieces at work:
1) We have radar & telescopes and orbits in space are *very* stable because there’s essentially zero drag. Once we have enough radar hits, we can calculate the true orbital elements with astonishing accuracy.
2) We can make corrective burns to the probe’s trajectory. So if we have *very* good trajectory data on both asteroid and probe, and those are both very predictable (particularly over short durations), then once we’re mostly going in the right direction we can use pretty small corrections to the probe’s trajectory as we get close.
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