Speaker
Description
Reconnaissance missions are a crucial next step when a celestial body threat to our planet has been identified and confirmed to be significant. This helps in studying the body in detail by determining precise orbital characteristics and mapping the physical specifications, thus enabling the all the stakeholders to determine the best possible course of action along with the timelines. Multiple missions to the identified asteroid threat are possible, depending on the identification date and the time of impact. Flyby missions are the first option, followed by a rendezvous mission to extract vital insights.
The current paper proposes a rendezvous reconnaissance mission that would identify the physical, environmental and orbital characteristics of the asteroid threat and send these crucial details back to Earth, which would later help in the planning of a future deflection mission. The focus of the paper is primarily on the mission design and the development of the concept of operations (ConOps) of a spacecraft with multiple payloads for performing the reconnaissance and observation of the target asteroid.
The target asteroid for this paper is the hypothetical asteroid 2025 PDC. Mission planning is executed in stages when more information from terrestrial observations become available. For an initial guess of the spacecraft’s trajectory, porkchop or bacon plots with varying launch dates and impulse contours are used.
The design of the ConOps (Concept of Operations) includes detailing the different phases of the mission to fulfill the objectives as follows, in addition to the LEOP (Launch and Early Operation) and decommissioning phases:
- Approach phase: wherein, the spacecraft is approaches within a threshold distance from the asteroid for initial data gathering.
- The Preliminary Survey Phase: in which the spacecraft attempts to find and maintain a stable orbit around the asteroid.
- The Detailed Survey phase: wherein precise orbit determination takes places and the physical characteristics of the asteroid are mapped to identify possible locations for deflection
In conclusion, the steps for an asteroid threat reconnaissance mission planning and the ConOps are outlined in order to create a framework that could be adapted to future missions.