Main-belt asteroids are of great interest for scientific exploration and engineering implementation. This paper investigates the accessibility of main-belt asteroids and the trajectories to reach them. The effects of gravity-assist maneuvers on the orbital energy and the orientation of orbital plane are explained. The Tisserand graph is employed to determine that Mars is the most useful gravity-assist body for main-belt asteroid missions. An assessment of the accessibility for all the main-belt asteroids that are over 100 km in diameter is carried out. The global minimum velocity increments of direct transfer trajectory and gravity-assist trajectories are obtained for each candidate target. Several proposed asteroid missions with launch dates between 2020 and 2026 are presented. Ballistic and low-thrust trajectories to the asteroid Flora via two Mars gravity assists are discussed, and the performance of the two gravity assists is analyzed.


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    Title :

    Accessibility of Main-Belt Asteroids via Gravity Assists


    Contributors:
    Chen, Yang (author) / Baoyin, Hexi (author) / Li, Junfeng (author)

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2014-03-01




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English