Asteroid Imapct Mission

Asteroid Impact Mission

This project aims to develop a space mission involving a CubeSat that will perform an interplanetary trasnfer to a Near Earth Object (NEO) for scanning, impact and decomission. The requirements of the mission are stipulated by the NASA CubeSat Launch Inititative (CSLI) where a maximum of 12U CubeSat can be launched. The purpose of the project is to analyze the space environment we will be dealing with, stablish the mission statements, objectives and requirements that will ultimately define the CubeSat design.

As a part of a team project, my main contributions were related to the space environment that we worked on making simulations for determining the total impulse required by the satellitle once the parking orbit was reached. Once this information was determined the rest of the components of the satellite can be specified and in this context my contribution was to the propulsion system needed and the solar array design based on the daylight and eclipse times.

Orbital Environment

In order to know the propulsion system required as well as the different components in terms of size and performance the orbital environment of the mission was analysed. To do so a sample NEO was selected as the principal target to see how much impulse the maneuver would require. The sample asteroid was Kamo o'alewa (2016 HO3) which has an heliocentric orbit similar to Earth. This is shown in the left image where blue orbit is from Earth and white orbit from the asteroid.

Orbital Maneuver

The first approach was computing a Hohmann Transfer to the NEO assuming no inclination between orbits and starting the transfer at a GEO parking orbit. The results for this maneuver were a total ∆V = 2.06 Km/s divided in two impulses:

Leaving parking orbit: ∆V = 1.335 Km/s
Reaching asteroid's orbit: ∆V = 0.7855 Km/s

STK_Simulation (1).mov

Orbit Inclination

With the total impulse considered, some propulsion systems allowed us to compute the transfer that only impled 3U of size. However the assumption of no inclination had to be considered as it requires high impulses to change the inclination of the orbit. A simulation in STK was performed to validate the handmade results concluding with a total impulse of ∆V = 5.5 Km/s to reach the asteroid's orbit with 7.79º inclination. The simulation is shown on the left.

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