Designing a binary asteroid pair

I am interested in building a little world involving a very realistic asteroid pair, orbiting each other, and would really appreciate some help with numbers and science for this. I would like two largish asteroids orbiting each other as close as is feasible.. (ideally I'd like a distance of up to 15km between them) Can you please make suggestions for:

- Reasonable mass, diameters and distance for the asteroids

They should be similarly sized (+/- 50%). I would like them to exert as much of a gravitational attraction on each other as they can, without being exceptional... maybe a few kilometers in diameter.. and reasonably close together. Please teach me or provide some simple math so I can provide size and mass and calculate orbital (around barycenter) elements.

- Estimates for how they rotate on their own axes

Are there any rotational constraints between the pair (like tidal locking?) What are reasonable rotation rates around their own axis? I am having a hard time visualizing how they would rotate.. would each asteroid rotate around a single axis which is static relative to the stars? Where would you place docking ports on a rotating asteroid to simplify docking maneuvers?

posted over 7 years ago

Innovine‭

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