Ongoing search for long stay-time roundtrip NEA mission opportunities

Introduction

This project developed rapid search techniques for impulsive/low-thrust roundtrip NEA robotic mission opportunity search. The impulsive delta-V is calculated by solving Lambert Problem and using Keplerian Propagation. The low thrust propellant consumption is calculated based on the Sims-Flanagan Transcription (SFT), but is later replaced by the Deep Learning Techniques.

All the calculation is performed High Performance Computing system. Approx. 2 billion impulsive trajectories were stored and 700 million low-thrust trajectories were recorded. See the data release page for more details

Current the search technique is well developed. The data will be updated regularly.

The search results can be visualised here. Note the loading will take 30 seconds to minutes. The loading issue will be solved … some time… Round-trip impulsive Pork Chop Plots

Related Publications

• Xie, R. and Dempster, A.G., 2022. Low-thrust Accessibility Evaluation for Near-Earth Asteroids. IEEE Aerospace Conference.(Accepted)
• Xie, R. and Dempster, A.G., 2021. Feasible low-thrust trajectory identification via a deep neural network classifier. 2021 AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference
• Xie, R. and Dempster, A.G., 2021. An on-line deep learning framework for low-thrust trajectory optimisation. Aerospace Science and Technology, 118, p.107002.
• Xie, R., Bennett, N.J. and Dempster, A.G., 2021. Target evaluation for near earth asteroid long-term mining missions. Acta Astronautica, 181, pp.249-270.