Starting Position-Based Database Pruning Strategy for Asteroid Missions Departing from a Main Belt Parking Orbit

Abstract

One of the biggest open questions in the field of asteroid mining are the unknown characteristics and composition of more than 99% of the discovered objects. In order to minimize the risks of false investment, this uncertainty has to be diminished. One strategy to overcome this is to realize space missions that characterize the composition of asteroids in an efficient way. The above described issue is addressed in this paper. A target accessibility analysis is presented, that is tailored for asteroid characterization missions departing from a main belt parking orbit. To enable and facilitate a flexible, non predefined and autonomous object selection, adequate database constraints based on the orbital elements of the targets at departure are presented that enable the filtering of non-reachable objects without excluding potential targets. The constraints are applied to all asteroids currently listed in the JPL Small-Body Database Browser. With the derived constraints, the used database can be reduced to 1% of its original size.