Orbital Deflection of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids Using a Coulomb Force Attractor

Abstract

A Coulomb force attractor is studied for orbital deflection of potentially hazardous asteroids. The concept of a Coulomb force attractor is based on towing an asteroid by utilizing the mutual gravitational force and Coulomb force, induced by artificial charging, between a spacecraft and the asteroid. Particular attention is placed on evaluating the resulting change in the asteroid orbit. The electric potential distribution around the spacecraft is studied, and an analytic expression of the mutual Coulomb force is derived. The equations of motion are derived for a rotating reference frame, and the performance of the Coulomb force attractor is investigated through numerical simulation. The differences between a Coulomb force attractor and a traditional gravity tractor are also examined, and the concept of asteroid towing using several spacecraft is proposed.

Near-Earth Asteroid Deflection Mission Using Coulomb Force Attractor

“…These correspond to the values assumed in Ref. 12). For all simulations, differential equations are integrated at double precision by the fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme.…”

“…11) To investigate the deflection distance achieved with a CFA, we formulated the dynamics, proposed multiple CFA concepts, and performed numerical simulations. 12) We concluded that a CFA can yield a greater deflection distance than can a simple GT. This paper proposes a method for controlling the position of the spacecraft in the vicinity of the asteroid.…”

“…Three-body dynamics is used to investigate the CFA dynamics. 12) The equations of motion, which are called the Clohessy-Wiltshire-Hill equations, are expressed as…”

“…Here, full nonlinear dynamics means the results produced by the original nonlinear equations in Ref. 12) with the control force sum T = T 0 + δT inserted. Of course, in this station-keeping mission, δT = 0 is always achieved.…”