Capturing near-Earth asteroids around Earth

Hasnain, Zaki; Lamb, Christopher A.; Ross, Shane D.

doi:10.1016/j.actaastro.2012.07.029

Cited by 40 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Moreover, the introduction of the Palermo scale to rank of a subset of NEOs offered an objective criterion based on the potential impact hazard (Chesley et al 2002). Finally, following the interest in capturing small NEOs (Sánchez and McInnes 2011a, b;Sánchez et al 2012b;Brophy et al 2012;Hasnain et al 2012), a new, objective, quantifiable and ordered criterion has been proposed, that classifies a subset of NEOs into Easily Retrievable Objects (EROs): the latter are the asteroids that can be gravitationally captured in bound periodic orbits around the collinear libration points L 1 and L 2 of the Sun-Earth restricted three-body model under a certain Δv threshold, arbitrarily selected at 500 m/s (Sánchez et al 2012a;García-Yárnoz et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Combined low-thrust propulsion and invariant manifold trajectories to capture NEOs in the Sun–Earth circular restricted three-body problem

Mingotti

Sánchez

McInnes

2014

Celest Mech Dyn Astr

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In this paper, a method to capture near-Earth objects (NEOs) incorporating low-thrust propulsion into the invariant manifolds technique is investigated. Assuming that a tugboat-spacecraft is in a rendez-vous condition with the candidate asteroid, the aim is to take the joint spacecraft-asteroid system to a selected periodic orbit of the Sun–Earth restricted three-body system: the orbit can be either a libration point periodic orbit (LPO) or a distant prograde periodic orbit (DPO) around the Earth. In detail, low-thrust propulsion is used to bring the joint spacecraft-asteroid system from the initial condition to a point belonging to the stable manifold associated to the final periodic orbit: from here onward, thanks to the intrinsic dynamics of the physical model adopted, the flight is purely ballistic. Dedicated guided and capture sets are introduced to exploit the combined use of low-thrust propulsion with stable manifolds trajectories, aiming at defining feasible first guess solutions. Then, an optimal control problem is formulated to refine and improve them. This approach enables a new class of missions, whose solutions are not obtainable neither through the patched-conics method nor through the classic invariant manifolds technique

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Combined low-thrust propulsion and invariant manifold trajectories to capture NEOs in the Sun–Earth circular restricted three-body problem

Mingotti

Sánchez

McInnes

2014

Celest Mech Dyn Astr

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“…The in-situ utilisation of resources in space has long been suggested as the means of lowering the cost of space missions, by, for example, providing bulk mass for radiation shielding or distilling rocket propellant for interplanetary transfers (Lewis, 1996). Although the concept of asteroid mining dates back to the very first rocketry pioneers (Tsiolkovsky, 1903), evidences of a renewed interest can be found in the growing body of literature on the topic (Baoyin et al, 2010, Sanchez and McInnes, 2011a, Hasnain et al, 2012, as well as in high profile private enterprise announcements such as by Planetary Resources Inc 1 Brophy et al, 2012 . A recent asteroid retrieval mission study ( ) proposed the capture of a 2-4 m diameter asteroid around the Moon with current technologies, which could serve as test-bed for the development of technologies for in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunities for Asteroid Retrieval Missions

2013

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Asteroids and comets are of strategic importance for science in an effort to uncover the formation, evolution and composition of the Solar System. Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are of particular interest because of their accessibility from Earth, but also because of their speculated wealth of material resources. The exploitation of these resources has long been discussed as a means to lower the cost of future space endeavours. In this chapter, we analyze the possibility of retrieving entire objects from accessible heliocentric orbits and moving them into the Earth's neighbourhood. The asteroid retrieval transfers are sought from the continuum of low energy transfers enabled by the dynamics of invariant manifolds; specifically, the retrieval transfers target planar, vertical Lyapunov and halo orbit families associated with the collinear equilibrium points of the Sun-Earth Circular Restricted Three Body problem. The judicious use of these dynamical features provides the best opportunity to find extremely low energy transfers for asteroidal material. With the objective to minimise transfer costs, a global search of impulsive transfers connecting the unperturbed asteroid's orbit with the stable manifold phase of the transfer is performed. A catalogue of asteroid retrieval opportunities of currently known NEOs is presented here. Despite the highly incomplete census of very small asteroids, the catalogue can already be populated with 12 different objects retrievable with less than 500 m/s of v. All, but one, of these objects have an expected size in the range that can be met by current propulsion technologies. Moreover, the methodology proposed represents a robust search for future retrieval candidates that can be automatically applied to a growing survey of NEOs.

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“…The idea of capturing small NEAs with relatively low energy has been investigated in detail in recent work (Sanchez and McInnes 2011;Hasnain et al 2012;Sanchez et al 2012). In these studies, periodic orbits around the Sun-Earth L1 and L2 libration points are regarded as potential parking orbits for captured asteroids, since the Sun-Earth L1 and L2 points are natural gateways to other systems, e.g., the Earth-Moon (EM) system (Koon et al 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a focus for new research, near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) have attracted significant attention for scientific mission applications (Zimmer 2013;Hasnain et al 2012;Brophy et al 2012b). Moreover, there is a growing commercial interest in NEA resources (Tronchetti 2014;Andrews et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct and indirect capture of near-Earth asteroids in the Earth–Moon system

Tan

McInnes

Ceriotti

2017

Celest Mech Dyn Astr

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Near-Earth asteroids have attracted attention for both scientific and commercial mission applications. Due to the fact that the Earth-Moon L1 and L2 points are candidates for gateway stations for lunar exploration, and an ideal location for space science, capturing asteroids and inserting them into periodic orbits around these points is of significant interest for the future. In this paper, we define a new type of lunar asteroid capture, termed direct capture. In this capture strategy, the candidate asteroid leaves its heliocentric orbit after an initial impulse, with its dynamics modelled using the Sun-Earth-Moon restricted four-body problem until its insertion, with a second impulse, onto the L2 stable manifold in the Earth-Moon circular restricted threebody problem. A Lambert arc in the Sun-asteroid two-body problem is used as an initial guess and a differential corrector used to generate the transfer trajectory from the asteroid's initial obit to the stable manifold associated with Earth-Moon L2 point. Results show that the direct asteroid capture strategy needs a shorter flight time compared to an indirect asteroid capture, which couples capture in the Sun-Earth circular restricted three-body problem and subsequent transfer to the Earth-Moon 2 circular restricted three-body problem. Finally, the direct and indirect asteroid capture strategies are also applied to consider capture of asteroids at the triangular libration points in the Earth-Moon system.

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Capturing near-Earth asteroids around Earth

Cited by 40 publications

References 17 publications

Combined low-thrust propulsion and invariant manifold trajectories to capture NEOs in the Sun–Earth circular restricted three-body problem

Combined low-thrust propulsion and invariant manifold trajectories to capture NEOs in the Sun–Earth circular restricted three-body problem

Opportunities for Asteroid Retrieval Missions

Direct and indirect capture of near-Earth asteroids in the Earth–Moon system

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