Abstract Near Earth Asteroids are attractive targets for new space missions; firstly, because of their scientific importance, but also because of their impact threat and prospective resources. The asteroid retrieval mission concept has thus arisen as a synergistic approach to tackle these three facets of interest in one single mission. This paper reviews the methodology used by the authors (2013) in a previous search for objects that could be transported from accessible heliocentric orbits into the Earth's neighbourhood at affordable costs (or Easily Retrievable Objects, a.k.a. EROs). This methodology consisted of a heuristic pruning and an impulsive manoeuvre trajectory optimisation. Low thrust propulsion on the other hand clearly enables the transportation of much larger objects due to its higher specific impulse. Hence, in this paper, low thrust retrieval transfers are sought using impulsive trajectories as first guesses to solve the optimal control problem. GPOPS-II is used to transcribe the continuous-time optimal control problem to a nonlinear programming problem (NLP). The latter is solved by IPOPT, an open source software package for large-scale NLPs. Finally, a natural continuation procedure that increases the asteroid mass allows to find out the largest objects that could be retrieved from a given asteroid orbit. If this retrievable mass is larger than the actual mass of the asteroid, the asteroid retrieval mission for this particular object is said to be feasible. The paper concludes with an updated list of 17 EROs, as of April 2016, with their maximum retrievable masses by means of low thrust propulsion. This ranges from 2000tons for the easiest object to be retrieved to 300tons for the least accessible of them.

    Highlights This paper summarizes the final results of the EU-funded ASTEROIDRETRIEVAL Project. Low thrust trajectories to retrieve 17 of the closest asteroids are presented. These retrieval trajectories are enabled by hyperbolic invariant manifold dynamics. Five asteroids appear to be feasible targets for asteroid retrieval missions. These are; 2006 RH120, 2007 UN12, 2013 RZ53, 2008 UA202 and 2014WX202.


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    Titel :

    Asteroid retrieval missions enabled by invariant manifold dynamics


    Beteiligte:

    Erschienen in:

    Acta Astronautica ; 127 ; 667-677


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2016-05-26


    Format / Umfang :

    11 pages




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch






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