A Numerical Research on a New Type of Asteroid Flexible Probe

Abstract

The asteroid landing detection is of great scientific and economic value. The traditional landing rigid probe is prone to rebound and escape due to the asteroid’s weak gravity and rugged terrain. Flexible body can avoid these problems by its deformation energy dissipation and ability to recovery. To promote the development of asteroid detection, this paper proposes a new type of flexible asteroid landing probe and demonstrates its advantages and feasibility. Firstly, this paper establishes a theory of asteroid’s dynamics environment with the polyhedron method and the spherical harmonic method. Secondly, this paper uses the discrete shell model to calculate the flexible probe’s internal force, the spring damping model and viscous-sliding friction model for its external force. Thirdly, this paper builds the flexible landing dynamics equations and achieves the dynamics simulation of the flexible probe. Finally, this paper demonstrates the advantages and feasibility of the flexible probe through two landing examples.

Keywords

• Asteroid exploration
• dynamics
• flexible probe
• landing detection