Distant activity of long-period comets C/2019 L3 (ATLAS) and C/2020 P3 (ATLAS)

Sun, Shaofeng; Shi, Jianchun; Ma, Yuehua; Zhao, Haibin

doi:10.1093/mnras/stae577

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…A great scientific return could be achieved by a robotic mission in which a spacecraft would be able to make a close encounter with a small celestial object such as a newly discovered asteroid or, possibly, a long-period comet [1][2][3]. Indeed, in the latter scenario such a fascinating (and somewhat elusive) small body in the Solar System could be fully characterized in terms of morphological structure, geometric shape, and coma composition, and close images of its nucleus could be obtained.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar Sail Optimal Performance in Heliocentric Nodal Flyby Missions

Mengali,

Bassetto,

Quarta

2024

Aerospace

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Solar sails are propellantless propulsion systems that extract momentum from solar radiation pressure. They consist of a large ultrathin membrane, typically aluminized, that reflects incident photons from the Sun to generate thrust for space navigation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the optimal performance of a solar sail-based spacecraft in performing two-dimensional heliocentric transfers to inertial points on the ecliptic that lie within an assigned annular region centered in the Sun. Similar to ESA’s Comet Interceptor mission, this type of transfer concept could prove useful for intercepting a potential celestial body, such as a long-period comet, that is passing close to Earth’s orbit. Specifically, it is assumed that the solar sail transfer occurs entirely in the ecliptic plane and, in analogy with recent studies, the flyby points explored are between 0.85au and 1.35au from the Sun. The heliocentric dynamics of the solar sail is described using the classical two-body model, assuming the spacecraft starts from Earth orbit (assumed circular), and an ideal force model to express the sail thrust vector. Finally, no constraint is imposed on the arrival velocity at flyby. Numerical simulation results show that solar sails are an attractive option to realize these specific heliocentric transfers.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%