Near-earth asteroid surveillance constellation in the sun-venus three-body system

Xingyu Zhou, Xiangyu Li*, Zhuoxi Huo, Linzhi Meng, Jiangchuan Huang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The threat of potential hazardous near-Earth asteroid (PHA) impact on Earth is increasingly attracting public attention. Monitoring and early warning of those PHAs are the premise of planetary defense. In this paper, we proposed a novel concept of surveillance constellation of heterogeneous wide-field near-Earth asteroid (NEA) surveyors (CROWN), in which six spacebased surveyors are loosely deployed in Venus-like orbits to detect the NEAs along the direction of the sunlight. First, the concept and overall design of the NEA surveillance constellation are discussed. Second, the transfer and deployment trajectory of the surveyors are investigated based on the Sun-Venus three-body system. The Sun-Venus libration orbit is taken as the parking orbit, and its stable invariant manifolds are used to reduce the deployment fuel consumption. Next, the detection performance of the CROWN was evaluated considering constraints of apparent visual magnitude and field of view. The NEA orbit determination (OD) using the CROWN was studied and verified. Simulation results show that the CROWN can be deployed with a total velocity increment of approximately 300 m/s. During the 5 years of observation, 99.8% of PHAs can be detected and the OD precision is better than a single-surveyor system. This paper can provide a reference for the construction of future asteroid defense system.

Original languageEnglish
Article number9864937
JournalSpace: Science and Technology (United States)
Volume2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2022

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