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Preliminary orbital analysis for a CubeSat mission to the Didymos binary asteroid system
- Source :
- Advances in Space Research. 62:2290-2305
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2018.
-
Abstract
- Nanosatellite missions represent a promising option for the exploration of the near-Earth asteroid population since they provide low-cost versatile platforms for scientific observations. This paper describes the preliminary orbital and navigation analyses for the DustCube mission, which was pre-selected to reach the binary asteroid system Didymos on-board ESA’s AIM spacecraft. Possible candidate orbits that exploit the binary nature of the system are identified and traded off to produce a preliminary concept of operations. The overall feasibility of the proposed scenario is then addressed by integrating the spacecraft trajectories in a realistic dynamical environment, evaluating their sensitivity to state errors, and estimating the accuracy of the orbit determination system. Preliminary results suggest that autonomous navigation of a Cubesat platform within a binary asteroid system is technically feasible. The proposed solution, which combines an initial parking orbit at the L4 equilibrium point with a Distant Retrograde Orbit for proximity operations, is shown to be consistent with the estimated orbit determination accuracy and allows to fulfil the mission requirements.
- Subjects :
- Atmospheric Science
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Computer science
Population
Cubesat
Aerospace Engineering
01 natural sciences
Didymos
Concept of operations
Binary asteroid
0103 physical sciences
CubeSat
Aerospace engineering
education
010303 astronomy & astrophysics
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Orbital analysi
education.field_of_study
Spacecraft
business.industry
Retrograde motion
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Parking orbit
Navigation
Geophysics
Space and Planetary Science
Asteroid
Physics::Space Physics
General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
business
Orbit determination
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 02731177
- Volume :
- 62
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Advances in Space Research
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....fb955ee2fe10b85da5efc134321051c7