AAS 98-186

GRAVITATIONAL EFFECTS OF EARTH IN OPTIMIZING DELTA-V FOR DEFLECTING EARTH-CROSSING ASTEROIDS

Sang-Young Park, I. M. Ross - Naval Postgraduate School

Abstract

The gravitational effects of Earth to calculate optimal impulses for deflecting Earth-crossing asteroids are presented in this paper. The patched conic method is used to formulate the constrained optimization problem. The constraints at Earth are pulled back to constraints at the edge of the sphere-of-influence. The result is a heliocentric three-body optimization problem with first-order constraints. Numerical solution to the approximate three-body problem indicate that the delta-V requirements are considerably more than the two-body approximation.

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