Near-Earth Asteroid Scout Flight Mission

A solar sail propelled small satellite mission concept to intercept and potentially rendezvous with newly discovered transient interstellar objects (ISOs) is described. The mission concept derives from the proposal for a technology demonstration mission for exiting the solar system at high velocity, eventually to reach the focal region of the solar gravitational lens. The ISO mission concept is to fly a solar sail toward a holding orbit around the Sun and when the ISO orbit is confirmed, target the sailcraft to reach an escape velocity of over 6 AU/year. This would permit rapid response to a new ISO discovery and an intercept within 10 AU from the Sun. Two new proven interplanetary technologies are utilized to enable such a mission: i) interplanetary smallsats, such as those demonstrated by the MarCO mission, and ii) solar sails, such as demonstrated by LightSail and IKAROS missions and developed for NEA Scout and Solar Cruiser missions. Current technology work suggests that already within this decade such a mission could fly and reach an ISO moving through the solar system. It might enable the first encounter with an ISO to allow for imaging and spectroscopy, measurements of size and mass, potentially giving a unique information about the object's origin and composition. A similar approach may be used to allow for a sample return.

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“…Current solar sails (LightSail, NEA Scout [20]) are square sails. A 4000 m 2 square sail would be ∼ 63 meters on a side.…”

Section: 5 the Spacecraftmentioning

confidence: 99%

A fast response mission to rendezvous with an interstellar object

Garber¹,

Friedman

Davoyan

et al. 2022

Exp Astron

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show abstract

“…Current solar sails (LightSail, NEA Scout (Lockett et al, 2020)) are square sails. A 4000 m 2 square sail would be approximately 63 meters on a side.…”

Section: The Spacecraftmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Fast Response Mission to Rendezvous with an Interstellar Object

Garber,

Friedman,

Davoyan

et al. 2021

Preprint

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A solar sail propelled small satellite mission concept to intercept and potentially rendezvous with newly discovered Interstellar Objects (ISOs) is described. The mission concept derives from the proposal for a technology demonstration mission (TDM) for exiting the solar system at high velocity, eventually to reach the focal region of the solar gravitational lens (SGL). The ISO mission concept is to fly a solar sail inward toward a holding orbit around the Sun and when the ISO orbit is confirmed, target the sailcraft to reach an escape velocity of over 6 AU/year. This would permit rapid response to a new ISO discovery and an intercept within 10 AU from the Sun. Two new proven interplanetary technologies are utilized to enable such a mission: i) interplanetary Smallsats, such as those demonstrated by the MarCO mission, and ii) solar sails, such as demonstrated by LightSail and IKAROS missions and developed for NEA Scout and Solar Cruiser missions. Current technology work suggests such a mission could fly and reach an ISO moving through the solar system within this decade. Such a mission might enable the first encounter with an ISO to allow for imaging and spectroscopy, measurements of size and mass, potentially giving a unique information about the object's origin and composition.

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“…An enormous number of near-Earth asteroid (NEA) orbit around the Sun, and among them 2072 NEAs, which are recorded in the Minor Planet Center (MPC) database (Data available online at https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/data [retrieved July 2021]), belong to the class of potential hazardous near-Earth asteroids (PHAs) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. These PHAs frequently make close approaches to Earth's orbit, and therefore, the hazard caused by PHAs is still a very real and ever-present threat [8,9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Near-Earth Asteroid Surveillance Constellation in the Sun-Venus Three-Body System

Zhou

Huo

et al. 2022

Space Sci Technol

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The threat of potential hazardous near-Earth asteroid (PHA) impact on Earth is increasingly attracting public attention. Monitoring and early warning of those PHAs are the premise of planetary defense. In this paper, we proposed a novel concept of surveillance constellation of heterogeneous wide-field near-Earth asteroid (NEA) surveyors (CROWN), in which six space-based surveyors are loosely deployed in Venus-like orbits to detect the NEAs along the direction of the sunlight. First, the concept and overall design of the NEA surveillance constellation are discussed. Second, the transfer and deployment trajectory of the surveyors are investigated based on the Sun-Venus three-body system. The Sun-Venus libration orbit is taken as the parking orbit, and its stable invariant manifolds are used to reduce the deployment fuel consumption. Next, the detection performance of the CROWN was evaluated considering constraints of apparent visual magnitude and field of view. The NEA orbit determination (OD) using the CROWN was studied and verified. Simulation results show that the CROWN can be deployed with a total velocity increment of approximately 300 m/s. During the 5 years of observation, 99.8% of PHAs can be detected and the OD precision is better than a single-surveyor system. This paper can provide a reference for the construction of future asteroid defense system.

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Near-Earth Asteroid Scout Flight Mission

Cited by 45 publications

References 5 publications

A fast response mission to rendezvous with an interstellar object

A fast response mission to rendezvous with an interstellar object

A Fast Response Mission to Rendezvous with an Interstellar Object

Near-Earth Asteroid Surveillance Constellation in the Sun-Venus Three-Body System

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