Sample-return mission planning for an asteroid on an earth fly-by trajectory

This paper investigates a systematic mission design of robust and optimal orbital transfer maneuvers for a sample return mission from an asteroid. In this study, we establish a space flight procedure to obtain the minimum Delta V required for a rendezvous and sample return mission from an asteroid. Given the initial (observed) conditions of an asteroid, a genetic algorithm is implemented to determine the optimal choice of Delta V required for rendezvous. This is achieved for given constraints on orbital trajectory, payload-mass and maximum allowable Delta V. In that sense, we provide a procedure for a constrained optimization problem. The genetic algorithm has been utilized for the systematic solution, and presented are results obtained for a hypothetical example. Robustness analysis was also performed on the results showing that in case of any uncertainty associated with Delta V firings, the spacecraft could still complete the mission and rendezvous with the asteroid. One unique aspect of the paper is the conducted robustness analysis, which provides a feasible error bound for (still) achieving a successful mission.