This thesis examines an orbit control problem for a spacecraft around a contact binary asteroid considering the dynamics of both the spacecraft and the asteroid itself. It is known that approximately 15\% of the near-Earth asteroids are binary, and among these the fraction of contact binaries is between 6 and 10%. Most contact binary asteroids are constituted of an agglomeration of smaller boulders maintained together due to their internal gravity, which is a relatively unstable configuration. Therefore, even a minor change in their mass distribution, like would be caused by the landing of mining machines, can result in a modification of the asteroid's structure including a landslide or a splitting. Particularly, separation of the asteroid into two parts is problematic in terms of orbit control, because of the consequences on the gravitational field of the asteroid. Traditional two-body orbital control methods cannot be applied to the missions to those asteroids because they do not consider the dynamic activities of the asteroids themselves. This thesis proposes and evaluates a control method to follow a predefined path under unknown states of the splitting binary asteroid.
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BOUVIER-THESIS-2018.pdf
