Deflection of an Earth-bound Asteroid using a Gravity-assisted Kinetic Impactor

摘要

This study aims to address impact Δv requirements of a kinetic impact mission for deflecting the hypothetical asteroid 2015 PDC. To assess deflection success, this study will use the Mahalanobis distance as the risk metric at the time of closest approach. The Mahalanobis distance provides the number of standard deviations away the close approach achieves, thus eliminating the issue of "Pc-roll-off" associated with collision probability calculations.