Asteroid Grand Tour |
Asteroid Grand Tour |
Apr 7 2007, 01:31 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
This article from JPL describes recent efforts to derive a main belt multi-asteroid mission trajectory...any of you orbitsmiths out there have some early thoughts/observations?
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Apr 8 2007, 03:07 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
It may be that some variation of JR's idea was explored by some of the teams in this year's trajectory optimization competition, but their focus seems to be on deriving planetary "pump-up" gravitational assists. If I'm visualizing this correctly, such assists cannot occur for a spacecraft in a retrograde orbit?...
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Apr 17 2007, 04:40 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
It may be that some variation of JR's idea was explored by some of the teams in this year's trajectory optimization competition, but their focus seems to be on deriving planetary "pump-up" gravitational assists. If I'm visualizing this correctly, such assists cannot occur for a spacecraft in a retrograde orbit?... I think my idea fails the listed criteria, because zooming out to 5.2 AU is bound to take more time up front than a mission that follows a more Dawnlike trajectory. And it's probably more costly, too. But it would visit a lot more asteroids. I'd like to see teams concoct the most productive tours in a retrograde orbit. Honestly, if you had a craft with a long lifespan and you did nothing but wait for serendipitous flybys, it seems like dozens would be possible -- maybe one every eight months for 20 years or so. My idea is just plain "bigger" than the stated contest asks for. It would be exciting to see, though, what a shrewd plan could accomplish, looking ahead like Deep Blue to find the cleverest mission. Could 30 flybys be possible? 50? |
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