Maximum residence time and reconnaissance of asteroids orbiting the sun within 5 au at less than 10 deg of inclination
Rodriguez, Gregory Jose
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117851
Description
Title
Maximum residence time and reconnaissance of asteroids orbiting the sun within 5 au at less than 10 deg of inclination
Author(s)
Rodriguez, Gregory Jose
Issue Date
2022-12-14
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Eggl, Siegfried
Department of Study
Aerospace Engineering
Discipline
Aerospace Engineering
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Asteroid residence times
NASA's DART
Low-thrust trajectory
Bang-bang control
Variable thrust
Abstract
We use NASA’s Small-Body Database Query to search for all asteroids in our Solar System that orbit the Sun within 5 au and at an angle of inclination less than 10° to the x-y ecliptic plane. We find 17,165 near-Earth asteroids that meet our constraints and map their orbits onto a heliocentric square grid. We propagate the asteroids over 10 Earth years and catalog their positions on the grid. The aggregate time asteroids spend in each cell of the grid is that cell’s residence time. We seek to find the maximum residence time in the cluster, so we discretize the grid to cells of dimension 0.01 au x 0.01 au, totaling 998,001 cells. Results show that the maximum residence time is at 1.0175 au from the Sun. We design a cost-effective reconnaissance mission using NASA’s DART spacecraft with the NEXT-C ion thruster to survey this region on a locally optimal low-thrust trajectory from Earth to the target.
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