Intelligent Cooperative Guidance for Multiple Impactors against Multiple Asteroid Debris

Kinetic impact is an effective way of asteroid defence. The asteroid may be broken up after the first impact and still be at risk of impacting the Earth, which need the second impact. The debris in the vicinity of asteroid may affect the second impact mission. A cooperative guidance method is proposed for the kinetic impact using multiple impactors. First, the dynamic equations and the constraints of impactors are established. Then, a cooperative guidance structure is constructed to calculate the basic acceleration and the compensatory acceleration. The basic acceleration determined by the proportional navigation guidance is used to guide the impactor to the asteroid, and the compensatory acceleration determined by the multi-agents system is used to avoid the collision of impactors. The obstacle warning zone is introduced for reward design of the reinforcement learning. The simulation of kinetic impact shows that the cooperative guidance method is effective in collision avoidance while achieving impact on the target asteroid.