Sustainable Asteroid Mining: Results and methods of team BIT-CAS-DFH for GTOC12

Abstract

The 12th Global Trajectory Optimization Competition challenged teams to design trajectories for mining asteroids and transporting extracted resources back to the Earth. This paper outlines the methods and results of the runner-up team, BIT-CAS-DFH, highlighting an overall analysis of the approach as well as detailed descriptions of the methods used. The approach begins with building databases to reduce computational costs in trajectory design. Then, asteroid sequences are determined. A segmentation-based approach was adopted to efficiently handle the large dataset. Each sequence was divided into four time-based segments. Segments 1 and 4 were generated forward and backward, respectively, using a breadth-first beam search. Candidates for these segments were refined using genetic and greedy algorithms. Segments 2 and 3 were then generated and selected forward and backward based on the results of Segments 1 and 4. Following this, a matching process paired candidates from Segments 2 and 3. With the asteroid sequences established, low-thrust trajectories were optimized using indirect methods. A local optimization strategy was employed to maximize the collected mass by fine-tuning rendezvous timings. The final solution is presented, with comparative analyses against other teams’ approaches.