Controlled Spacecraft Trajectories in the Context of a Mission to a Binary Asteroid System

The NASA DART and ESA Hera missions to binary asteroid 65803 Didymos have generated a lot of interest in the study of spacecraft dynamics in the vicinity of binary asteroids. The combination of the effect of the irregular shape and the rotation of the primary bodies makes them not only non-linear, but also non-autonomous systems. This study uses a technique to design reference trajectories in the context of a mission to a binary asteroid system using a fourth-order gravitational potential model for the two primary bodies. The rotation of the primary bodies, their elliptical mutual motion and the solar radiation pressure are also considered in the model, which makes this study unique. It then compares the control effort required when these reference trajectories are used with that required when reference trajectories are built with simpler models. The goal is to examine how the choice of the model used to compute reference trajectories influences the control effort required to keep the spacecraft close to them.

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