Operation Orbit Options for Asteroid Explorations
For the exploration of asteroids, especially those with small masses, there are several options for the probe: flybying the asteroid, becoming a satellite of the asteroid, or formation flying with the asteroid.This study focuses on the last two kinds of orbits.For the circulate orbit, the model of the asteroids gravity field is an important issue.Difficulties will be encountered when constructing the analytical solutions to the circulate orbits.Two kinds of formation flying orbits are considered in this study: (1)around the collinear libration points (CLPs) of the Sun-asteroid system, and (2)directly around the asteroid itself.The asteroid Apophis is used as an example throughout the paper.For the first formation flying strategy, the operation orbits (Lissajous orbits and halo orbits) around the CLP L1 are firstly constructed in the circular restricted three-body problem (CRTBP), and then generalized to the real force model.For the second formation flying strategy, the operation orbits are firstly constructed using the well-known C-W equation, and then also generalized to the real force model, where the asteroids true orbit and the solar radiation pressure (SRP) are considered.Studies in this work may be used as references for future asteroid missions.
Asteroid Circulate orbit Formation flying orbit Libration point C-W equation
Xiaosheng Xin Lin Liu Shengxian Yu
School of Astronomy and Space Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
国际会议
The 27th Conference of Spacecraft TT&C Technology in China(第27届中国飞行器测控学术会议)
广州
英文
371-384
2014-11-09（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）