Near-Earth asteroid flyby trajectories from the Sun-Earth L2 for Chang’e-2’s extended flight

Abstract

Driven by curiosity about possible flight options for the Chang’e-2 spacecraft after it remains at the Sun-Earth L2 point, effective approaches were developed for designing preliminary fuel-optimal near-Earth asteroid flyby trajectories. The approaches include the use of modified unstable manifolds, grid search of the manifolds’ parameters, and a two-impulse maneuver for orbital phase matching and z-axis bias change, and are demonstrated to be effective in asteroid target screening and trajectory optimization. Asteroid flybys are expected to be within a distance of 2 × 10⁷ km from the Earth owing to the constrained Earth-spacecraft communication range. In this case, the spacecraft’s orbital motion is significantly affected by the gravities of both the Sun and the Earth, and therefore, the concept of the “heliocentric oscillating-Kepler orbit” is proposed, because the classical orbital elements of the flyby trajectories referenced in the heliocentric inertial frame oscillate significantly with respect to time. The analysis and results presented in this study show that, among the asteroids whose orbits are the most accurately predicted, “Toutatis”, “2005 NZ6”, or “2010 CL19” might be encountered by Chang’e-2 in late 2012 or 2013 with total impulses less than 100m/s.