Solar-Sail Trajectory Design for a Multiple Near-Earth-Asteroid Rendezvous Mission

Abstract

The scientific interest for near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) as well as the interest in potentially hazardous asteroids from the perspective of planetary defense led the space community to focus on NEA mission studies. A multiple NEA rendezvous mission with close-up observations of several objects can help to improve the characterization of these asteroids. This work explores the design of a solar-sail spacecraft for such a mission, focusing on the search of possible sequences of encounters and the trajectory optimization. This is done in two sequential steps: a sequence search by means of a simplified trajectory model and a set of heuristic rules based on astrodynamics, and a subsequent optimization phase. A shape-based approach for solar sailing has been developed and used for the first phase. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through a fully-optimized multiple NEA rendezvous mission. The results show that it is possible to visit 5 NEAs within 10 years with near-term solar-sail technology.