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Thermal inertia determines the temperature distribution over the surface ofan asteroid and therefore governs the magnitude the Yarkovsky effect. Thelatter causes gradual drifting of the orbits of km-sized asteroids and plays animportant role in the delivery of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) from the mainbelt and in the dynamical spreading of asteroid families. At present, verylittle is known about the thermal inertia of asteroids in the km size range.Here we show that the average thermal inertia of a sample of NEAs in thekm-size range is 200 $\pm$ 40 J m&#8722;2 s&#8722;0.5 K&#8722;1. Furthermore,we identify a trend of increasing thermal inertia with decreasing asteroiddiameter, D. This indicates that the dependence of the drift rate of theorbital semimajor axis on the size of asteroids due to the Yarkovsky effect isa more complex function than the generally adopted D^(&#8722;1) dependence, andthat the size distribution of objects injected by Yarkovsky-driven orbitalmobility into the NEA source regions is less skewed to smaller sizes thangenerally assumed. We discuss how this fact may help to explain the smalldifference in the slope of the size distribution of km-sized NEAs and main-beltasteroids.

Thermal inertia of near-Earth asteroids and implications for the magnitude of the Yarkovsky effect