Trajectory Design of Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Exploration with Reusable Probes from Cislunar Space

Abstract

This article presents a trajectory design problem concerning the exploration of potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids (PHAs) with reusable probes from cislunar space. A total of 20 probes, making round trips departing from and returning to a service space station in a lunar distant retrograde orbit, are expected to explore as many PHAs as possible by means of close flyby within a 10-year time window. The trajectory design problem was released in the 12th edition of China’s Trajectory Optimization Competition on 20 August 2022, and a total of 10 sets of trajectory solutions were submitted. As the authors who proposed the competition problem, we present in this article the problem descriptions, trajectory analysis, and design, as well as an impressive trajectory solution in which a total of 105 PHAs are explored. It is concluded that taking advantage of reusable probes from cislunar space is a promising option to efficiently explore large numbers of PHAs.

Keywords

• China’s Trajectory Optimization Competition
• potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids
• reusable probes
• cislunar space
• distant retrograde orbits