The use of tethered artificial gravity assists in space travel to perform orbital maneuvers has the potential to significantly extend missions through the reduction of fuel consumption. As space exploration in the solar system has become more accessible, interest in near-Earth asteroid (NEA) missions has grown. Studying NEAs can yield new information about the early solar system as well as provide important insights into related fields, such as planetary defense. Further, it has been discovered that many NEAs are in binary systems, which presents a unique orbital environment for optimizing spacecraft maneuvers for future asteroid missions. This paper develops an approach employing a genetic algorithm to determine optimal tethered maneuvers to periodic orbits in the vicinity of a binary asteroid using circular restricted three-body problem (CR3BP) dynamics. The optimization identifies the maneuver that results in the greatest change in the Jacobi constant values between the incoming orbit and final desired orbit. This maximizes the benefit of the tethered artificial gravity assist into a periodic orbit about the primary asteroid. The tethered gravity assists are examined for binary asteroid systems with various mass ratios using CR3BP dynamics. This investigation selected three observed binary asteroid systems with orbital eccentricities that allow for modeling using the CR3BP. Optimizations were performed and simulated for the three systems with different mass ratios to investigate and demonstrate the viability of tethered gravity assists in various binary asteroid environments.

中文翻译：

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系留人工引力优化有助于在圆形受限三体问题中捕获双小行星


在太空旅行中使用系留人工重力辅助执行轨道机动，有可能通过减少燃料消耗来显着延长任务。随着太阳系中的太空探索变得更加容易，人们对近地小行星 （NEA） 任务的兴趣也越来越大。研究 NEA 可以产生有关早期太阳系的新信息，并为相关领域（例如行星防御）提供重要见解。此外，已经发现许多 NEA 位于双系统中，这为优化未来小行星任务的航天器机动提供了独特的轨道环境。本文开发了一种采用遗传算法的方法，使用圆形受限三体问题 （CR3BP） 动力学来确定双小行星附近周期性轨道的最佳系留机动。优化确定了导致入射轨道和最终所需轨道之间的雅可比常数值发生最大变化的机动。这最大限度地利用了系留人工重力辅助进入围绕主小行星的周期性轨道的好处。使用 CR3BP 动力学检查了具有不同质量比的双小行星系统的系留引力辅助。这项调查选择了三个观测到的具有轨道偏心率的双小行星系统，允许使用 CR3BP 进行建模。对具有不同质量比的三个系统进行优化和模拟，以研究和证明系留引力辅助在各种双小行星环境中的可行性。