GTOC12: Results from Σ team

Asteroid mining is a potentially lucrative method for extracting resources from space. Water resources found on asteroids can serve as fuel supplies for spacecrafts in deep space, and some asteroids are rich in precious metals, offering immense potential economic value. The 12th Global Trajectory Optimization Competition, held in 2023, introduced a challenge to trajectory design for sustainable asteroid mining. Participating teams were tasked with maximizing the mining quantity over a 15-yr period by utilizing as many mining ships as possible to depart from the Earth, deploy miners on multiple asteroids, recover minerals, and return to the Earth. Σ team devised a strategy in which one ship completes one sequence, enabling the collection of minerals from 203 asteroids using 26 mining ships. This paper outlines the design methodology and outcomes of this approach, encompassing a preliminary analysis of the problem, optimization for the Earth departure and return, flight sequence search, and low-thrust conversion and optimization. Through methods such as asteroid selection and clustering, database building for Earth–asteroid transfers, global search with an impulsive model, local optimization with a low-thrust model, and conversion of remaining fuel into mining time, the computational efficiency was significantly enhanced, fuel consumption per unit mineral collection was reduced, and mining quantity was improved. Finally, the design outcomes of this approach are presented. The proposed trajectory design method enables the completion of multiple asteroid rendezvouses in a short time, providing valuable insights for future missions involving a single spacecraft conducting multiple rendezvouses with multiple asteroids.