Human Missions to Near-Earth Asteroids – A Stepping Stone to Human Mars Missions
- Paper number
IAC-07-B3.5.05
- Author
Mr. Wilfried Hofstetter, Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Paul Wooster, Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), United States
- Coauthor
Prof. Edward Crawley, Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), United States
- Year
2007
- Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of mission architectures and a reference conceptual design for human missions to Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs). Near Earth Asteroids represent an attractive destination for human missions because they offer a target of significant scientific interest which can be characterized and sampled, and because missions to them can be conducted with systems used for extended lunar surface missions. NEA missions, however, are also operationally similar to human Mars missions because they require interplanetary cruise and guidance and navigation, operations at distances from Earth that will introduce more pronounced time lags than lunar missions, and Earth entry at velocities beyond those attained on lunar missions. These characteristics make NEA missions desirable as lunar exploration hardware-based precursors for human Mars missions. The analysis presented in this paper is based on the assumption that no dedicated systems will be developed for NEA missions. Based on this constraint, possible NEA mission architectures are investigated given a set of Moon and Mars architecture combinations and different NEAs as mission destination. A selected mission architecture is developed into a conceptual design for which a detailed description of systems and concept of operations is provided. In addition to the specific mission design, the suitability of the vicinity of a location in the vicinity of a Near Earth Asteroid for permanent human presence is assessed. To that end, an analysis of Near Earth Asteroids compared to the Martian surface, the lunar surface, the Martian Moons, and Earth orbit is carried out with respect to such characteristics as gravity, radiation environment, resource spectrum and abundance, location accessibility, growth potential, and other factors.
- Abstract document