Study of the dynamics of artificial satellites around triple systems

Abstract

Space missions to small bodies of the Solar System provide important information about the system studied and the formation of the Solar System itself. Moreover, in the last decade, has grown the economic importance of the exploration of these bodies, and this is shown by the number of academic papers on research in asteroid mining and by the number of companies involved in this type of exploration. Thinking about the scientific and economic return, we propose the study of missions to small bodies systems, particularly triple systems like the asteroid 2001 SN263 (target of the ASTER project) and the Dwarf Planet Haumea (an object studied extensively at the time, making it an interesting target to current studies), seeking for non-periodic orbits that close at some point and could have guaranteed their periodicity by applying an impulse at the point of closure, in order to place the spacecraft back into the previous orbit. Furthermore, we want to measure, through long period numerical integrations, the life time of small spacecraft around these bodies. In a second part of this project, we propose the study of perturbations in the triple asteroid 2001 SN263, by mapping the disturbance of the Sun, the Earth, Mars and Jupiter on orbits around members of this asteroid. We will also add the disturbance of solar radiation pressure to the system in order to verify its impact on the orbits previously found. The results could serve for future real mission to any of these systems, Haumea and the ASTER project, the first Brazilian mission to deep space, whose target is the asteroid 2001 SN263. This combination of target, studied by the same techniques as they are very similar systems, forms an excellent combination of practical application (ASTER mission) and research on current topics for the international reality (Haumea). (AU)