Trajectory design for a rendezvous mission to Earth's Trojan asteroid 2010 TK7

In this paper a rendezvous mission to the Earth's Trojan asteroid 2010 TK7 is proposed, and preliminary transfer trajectories are designed. Due to the high inclination (∼20.9°) of the target asteroid relative to the ecliptic plane, direct transfers usually require large amounts of fuel consumption, which is beyond the capacity of current technology. As gravity assist technique could effectively change the inclination of spacecraft's trajectory, it is adopted to reduce the launch energy and rendezvous velocity maneuver. In practical computation, impulsive and low-thrust, gravity-assisted trajectories are considered. Among all the trajectories computed, the low-thrust gravity-assisted trajectory with Venus-Earth-Venus (V-E-V) swingby sequence performs the best in terms of propellant mass. For a spacecraft with initial mass of 800 kg, propellant mass of the best trajectory is 36.74 kg. Numerical results indicate that both the impulsive and low-thrust, gravity-assisted trajectories corresponding to V-E-V sequence could satisfy mission constraints, and can be applied to practical rendezvous mission.