Two mechanisms of natural transport in the Solar System

Ren, Yuan; Masdemont, Josep J.; Gómez, Gérard; Fantino, Elena

doi:10.1016/j.cnsns.2011.06.030

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…Solar system transport phenomena, such as the rapid orbital transitions experienced by comets Oterma and Gehrels 3, from heliocentric orbits outside Jupiter orbital radius to orbits enclosed by it [23], or the Kirkwood gaps in the main asteroid belt, are some manifestations of the sensitivities of multi-body dynamics. The hyperbolic invariant manifold structures associated with periodic orbits near the L 1 and L 2 collinear points of the Three Body Problem provide a mathematical representation of the mechanism that controls the aforementioned transport phenomena [23][24][25]. The same underlying principles that enable these transport phenomena allow also for excellent opportunities to design incredibly low energy transfers.…”

Section: Low Energy Transport Conduitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asteroid retrieval missions enabled by invariant manifold dynamics

Sánchez

Yárnoz

2016

Acta Astronautica

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Near Earth Asteroids are attractive targets for new space missions; firstly, because of their scientific importance, but also because of their impact threat and prospective resources. The asteroid retrieval mission concept has thus arisen as a synergistic approach to tackle these three facets of interest in one single mission. This paper reviews the methodology used by the authors (2013) in a previous search for objects that could be transported from accessible heliocentric orbits into the Earth's neighbourhood at affordable costs (or Easily Retrievable Objects, a.k.a. EROs). This methodology consisted of a heuristic pruning and an impulsive manoeuvre trajectory optimisation. Low thrust propulsion on the other hand clearly enables the transportation of much larger objects due to its much higher specific impulse. Hence, in this paper, low thrust retrieval transfers are sought using impulsive trajectories as first guesses to solve the optimal control problem. GPOPS-II is used to transcribe the continuous-time optimal control problem to a nonlinear programming problem (NLP). The latter is solved by IPOPT, an open source software package for largescale NLPs. Finally, a natural continuation procedure that increases the asteroid mass allows to find out the largest objects that could be retrieved from a given asteroid orbit. If this retrievable mass is larger than the actual mass of the asteroid, the asteroid retrieval mission for this particular object is said to be feasible. The paper concludes with an updated list of 17 EROs, as of April 2016, with their maximum retrievable masses by means of low thrust propulsion. This ranges from 2,000 tonnes for the easiest object to be retrieved to 300 tonnes for the least accessible of them.

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Section: Low Energy Transport Conduitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asteroid retrieval missions enabled by invariant manifold dynamics

Sánchez

Yárnoz

2016

Acta Astronautica

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“…Unfortunately Fig. 5 (b) demonstrates that this intersection does not happen, nor it occurs in short-scale times [15]. (In [43] it is shown that these orbits may match in million years, which is not likely the case of real space missions).…”

Section: Ballistic Capture At Marsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(15). Thus, for some t = (t rv − t i ) + (t pc − t rv ), the attainable set containing low-thrust rendez-vous and capture trajectories is Fig.…”

Section: Constructing Earth-mars Transfers With Ballistic Escape and mentioning

confidence: 99%

Earth–Mars transfers with ballistic escape and low-thrust capture

Mingotti

Topputo

Bernelli‐Zazzera

2011

Celest Mech Dyn Astr

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In this paper novel Earth-Mars transfers are presented. These transfers exploit the natural dynamics of n-body models as well as the high specific impulse typical of low-thrust systems. The Moon-perturbed version of the Sun-Earth problem is introduced to design ballistic escape orbits performing lunar gravity assists. The ballistic capture is designed in the Sun-Mars system where special attainable sets are defined and used to handle the low-thrust control. The complete trajectory is optimized in the full n-body problem which takes into account planets' orbital inclinations and eccentricities. Accurate, efficient solutions with reasonable flight times are presented and compared with known results.

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“…In Ren et al (2012), the authors consider short-time natural transport based on the existence of heteroclinic connections between libration point orbits of a pair of 'consecutive' Sun-planet RTBPs. Following the same idea, we want to explore these type of connections between two different bicircular problems.…”

Section: Invariant Manifolds Of O L I P Imentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inspired by the work of Gladman et al (1996), Ren et al (2012) introduced two natural mass transport mechanisms in the Solar system between the neighbourhoods of Mars and the Earth. The first mechanism is a short-time transport, and is based on the existence of 'pseudo-heteroclinic' connections between libration point orbits of uncoupled pairs of Sun-Mars and Sun-Earth circular restricted three-body problems, RTBPs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pseudo-heteroclinic connections between bicircular restricted four-body problems

Barrabés¹,

Gómez²,

Mondelo³

et al. 2016

Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.

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In this paper, we show a mechanism to explain transport from the outer to the inner Solar system. Such a mechanism is based on dynamical systems theory. More concretely, we consider a sequence of uncoupled bicircular restricted four-body problems -BR4BP -(involving the Sun, Jupiter, a planet and an infinitesimal mass), being the planet Neptune, Uranus and Saturn. For each BR4BP, we compute the dynamical substitutes of the collinear equilibrium points of the corresponding restricted three-body problem (Sun, planet and infinitesimal mass), which become periodic orbits. These periodic orbits are unstable, and the role that their invariant manifolds play in relation with transport from exterior planets to the inner ones is discussed.Key words: methods: numerical -celestial mechanics -planets and satellites: dynamical evolution and stability. I N T RO D U C T I O NThe geometrical approach provided by dynamical systems methods allows the use of stable/unstable manifolds for the determination of spacecraft transfer orbits in the Solar system (see for example, Gómez et al. 1993;Bollt & Meiss 1995). The same kind of methods can also be used to explain some mass transport mechanisms in the Solar system.Inspired by the work of Gladman et al. (1996), Ren et al. (2012) introduced two natural mass transport mechanisms in the Solar system between the neighbourhoods of Mars and the Earth. The first mechanism is a short-time transport, and is based on the existence of 'pseudo-heteroclinic' connections between libration point orbits of uncoupled pairs of Sun-Mars and Sun-Earth circular restricted three-body problems, RTBPs. The term 'pseudo' is due to the fact that the two RTBPs are uncoupled, the hyperbolic manifolds of the departing and arrival RTBP only intersect in configuration space and a small velocity increment is required to switch from one to the other. The second and long-time transport mechanism relies on the existence of heteroclinic connections between long-period periodic orbits in one single RTBP (the Sun-Jupiter system), and is the result of the strongly chaotic motion of the minor body of the problem.Lo & Ross (1999) also explored the transport mechanism by considering a sequence of RTBP. In each of them, they computed the osculating orbital elements of the one-dimensional invariant manifolds of the collinear libration points L 1 and L 2 (see Fig. 1). E-mail: barrabes@ima.udg.es (EB); merce.olle@upc.edu (MO)The results suggest possible heteroclinic connections between the manifolds associated with the three most outer planets.Collisions in the Solar system are abundant and are a mechanism that changes the velocity of the colliding bodies. After a collision, the bodies can, eventually, be injected in a suitable invariant manifold that transports them from their original location to very distant places. This possibility has not been explored in this paper.The present paper is devoted to provide a dynamical mechanism for the transport of comets, asteroids and small particles from the outer towards the inner...

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Two mechanisms of natural transport in the Solar System

Cited by 16 publications

References 10 publications

Asteroid retrieval missions enabled by invariant manifold dynamics

Asteroid retrieval missions enabled by invariant manifold dynamics

Earth–Mars transfers with ballistic escape and low-thrust capture

Pseudo-heteroclinic connections between bicircular restricted four-body problems

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