Maximum residence time and reconnaissance of asteroids orbiting the sun within 5 au at less than 10 deg of inclination

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Aerospace Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Rodriguez, Gregory Jose

Contributors dc:contributor

• Eggl, Siegfried

• Asteroid Residence Times
• Nasa's Dart
• Low-thrust Trajectory
• Bang-bang Control
• Variable Thrust

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Gregory Rodriguez

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117851

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F117851