ZEM/ZEV Feedback Guidance Application to Fuel-Efficient Orbital Maneuvers Around an Irregular-Shaped Asteroid

The new vision for advanced missions to asteroids, including soft landing, presents many challenges that have essential differences from previous experiences with planetary landing. This paper focuses on two subjects pertaining to asteroid proximity operations: highaccuracy modeling of the gravitational environment and fuel-efficient guidance and control algorithm design. Both a spherical harmonic expansion method and a polyhedron shape model are used for modeling the gravitational environment of an irregular-shaped asteroid. The effects of Coriolis and centripetal accelerations are also examined. The ZEM/ZEV (Zero-Effort-Miss/Zero-Effort-Velocity) feedback guidance algorithm is in general not an optimal control scheme, however it is conceptually simple and easy to implement, and in many cases it approaches optimality. Two mission phases, orbital transfer between observational orbits and soft landing, are numerically simulated using different implementations of the ZEM/ZEV algorithm. These simulations show that the ZEM/ZEV algorithm is suitable for asteroid proximity operations, and important considerations for using the algorithm are discussed.

[1]  Daniel J. Scheeres,et al.  THE ORBITAL DYNAMICS ENVIRONMENT OF 433 EROS , 2002 .

[2]  Roberto Furfaro,et al.  Non-linear Sliding Guidance algorithms for precision lunar landing , 2011 .

[3]  R. Park,et al.  Estimating Small-Body Gravity Field from Shape Model and Navigation Data , 2008 .

[4]  Yanning Guo,et al.  Applications of Generalized Zero-Effort-Miss/Zero-Effort-Velocity Feedback Guidance Algorithm , 2013 .

[5]  D. Scheeres,et al.  Exterior gravitation of a polyhedron derived and compared with harmonic and mascon gravitation representations of asteroid 4769 Castalia , 1996 .

[6]  Christopher N. D'Souza,et al.  AN OPTIMAL GUIDANCE LAW FOR PLANETARY LANDING , 1997 .

[7]  Yanning Guo,et al.  AAS 11-531 GUIDANCE ALGORITHMS FOR ASTEROID INTERCEPT MISSIONS WITH PRECISION TARGETING REQUIREMENTS , 2011 .

[8]  Yanning Guo,et al.  Spacecraft Guidance Algorithms for Asteroid Intercept and Rendezvous Missions , 2012 .

[9]  R. Battin.  An introduction to the mathematics and methods of astrodynamics , 1987 .

[10]  D. Scheeres.  Orbital mechanics about small bodies , 2012 .

[11]  M. Guelman,et al.  Power limited soft landing on an asteroid , 1994 .

[12]  J. Miller,et al.  Determination of Shape, Gravity, and Rotational State of Asteroid 433 Eros , 2002 .

[13]  Behrouz Ebrahimi,et al.  Optimal sliding-mode guidance with terminal velocity constraint for fixed-interval propulsive maneuvers , 2008 .

[14]  J. Miller,et al.  Evaluation of the Dynamic Environment of an Asteroid: Applications to 433 Eros , 2000 .