Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Dissertations & Theses
Published December 12, 2016 | Version v1
Thesis Open

A Delta-V Map of the Known Main Belt Asteroids

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Harvard University

Contributors

  • 1. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Description

With the lowered costs of rocket technology and the commercialization of the space industry, asteroid mining is becoming both feasible and profitable. Although the first targets fore mining will be Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), the Main Belt contains 106 times more material by mass.. The creation and expansion of this new asteroid mining industry is contingent on minimizing the cost to match orbits and rendezvous with Main Belt asteroids, dictated by the necessary velocity change in a mining spacecraft (Delta-V). This paper develops two different flight burn paths, both starting from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and ending with successful rendezvous. These methods are then applied to the 700,000 asteroids in the Minor Planet Center database to analyze the Main Belt asteroids to find low Delta-V mining targets. We find that there are 5,211 potential targets with a Delta-V < 8 km s−1, but the distribution is steep and reduces to 7 with Delta-V < 7 km s−1. We then compare the strengths of the two burn methods.

Notes

Astro 98

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Additional details

References

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Subjects

Asteroid belt
http://astrothesaurus.org/uat/70
Orbits
http://astrothesaurus.org/uat/1184