TY  - JOUR
A1  - Peloni, Alessandro
A1  - Ceriotti, Matteo
A1  - Dachwald, Bernd
T1  - Solar-sail trajectory design for a multiple near-earth-asteroid rendezvous mission
JF  - Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
N2  - The scientific interest for near-Earth asteroids as well as the interest in potentially hazardous asteroids from the perspective of planetary defense led the space community to focus on near-Earth asteroid mission studies. A multiple near-Earth asteroid rendezvous mission with close-up observations of several objects can help to improve the characterization of these asteroids. This work explores the design of a solar-sail spacecraft for such a mission, focusing on the search of possible sequences of encounters and the trajectory optimization. This is done in two sequential steps: a sequence search by means of a simplified trajectory model and a set of heuristic rules based on astrodynamics, and a subsequent optimization phase. A shape-based approach for solar sailing has been developed and is used for the first phase. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through a fully optimized multiple near-Earth asteroid rendezvous mission. The results show that it is possible to visit five near-Earth asteroids within 10 years with near-term solar-sail technology.
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://dx.doi.org/10.2514/1.G000470
SN  - 0731-5090
VL  - 39
IS  - 12
SP  - 2712
EP  - 2724
PB  - AIAA
CY  - Reston, Va.
ER  -