Gravity assisted Orbital Maneuvers for missions to asteroids

Abstract

It is believed that most asteroids retain information about the composition of the Solar System. In this sense, it is very important to study these bodies.Asteroids are also sources of rare minerals and chemicals. Despite this interest, few space missions to asteroids have been launched to date.Thus, the Aster mission arises, consisting in sending a space vehicle to an asteroid. This is a large project involving several Brazilian institutions such as INPE, UNESP, UNB, ON, UFABC, UFRJ, USP, UFPr, UEFS, ITA, IMT, Unicamp, UFF and MAST. In addition to scientific knowledge, many technology products are expected from this mission, such as the validation of various equipment, drivers, etc., as well as the training of human resources. The mission is now under feasibility studies. One of the most important steps for this phase of the mission, the current phase of the project, It is to study the most economical way of sending the spacecraft to the desired asteroid. One of the considered forms to do that is to use a close passage by the Moon. Thus, this paper will consider this type of operation with the use of two models. Assuming the system as modeled by the restricted three body problem and by using the "Patched Conics", dividing the problem into three problems of two bodies (vehicle-Earth, Moon and vehicle-vehicle-Earth). There are no comparative studies of these models for the three-dimensional case. (AU)