Optimal Trajectory Design for Asteroid Deflection Mission

Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission

The Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission will be the first space experiment to demonstrate asteroid impact hazard mitigation by using a kinetic impactor to deflect an asteroid. AIDA is an international cooperation entering Phase A study at NASA and ESA, consisting of two mission elements: the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and the ESA Asteroid Impact Mi...

Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment mission: Kinetic impactor

The Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission will be the first space experiment to demonstrate asteroid impact hazard mitigation by using a kinetic impactor to deflect an asteroid. AIDA is an international cooperation, consisting of two mission elements: the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and the ESA Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) rendezvous mission. The prima...

Optimal impact strategies for asteroid deflection

This paper presents an analysis of optimal impact strategies to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids. In order to compute the increase in the minimum orbit intersection distance of the asteroid due to an impact with a spacecraft, simple analytical formulae are derived from proximal motion equations. The proposed analytical formulation allows for an analysis of the optimal direction of the de...

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

Optimal Trajectory Design for Interception and Deflection of near Earth Objects

Many asteroids and comets orbit the inner solar system; among them Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are those celestial bodies for which the orbit lies close, and sometimes crosses, the Earth’s orbit. Over the last decades the impact hazard they pose to the Earth has generated heated discussions on the required measures to react to such a scenario. The aim of the research presented in this dissertatio...