Asteroid Resource Exploration Mission By Reconnaissance And Landed Investigation

摘要

Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites (SECM), which has been developed near forty satellites into Earth orbit for space science, communication and navigation, and Earth observation, now shows an increasing interest of exploring deep space targets in a cost-effective way. Asteroid Resource Exploration Mission by Reconnaissance and Landed Investigation (AREM) is the first interplanetary mission of SECM, and has been planning and researching for two years. By sending a small spacecraft below 500 kg to a near Earth asteroid to survey the resources composition, internal structure, and fine mapping, the category of mineral and mining environment can be better understood. This could lead to future asteroid mining as well as resource utilization mission. AREM is considered as a secondary payload on the Long March 3 Rocket riding up to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, and takes advantages of Moon's gravity assists to obtain the desired orbit energy with minimal fuel cost. Several 100m diameter asteroids, 2013WA44, 2007YF, 2012UV136, 2005TG50, 2001CQ36, have been selected as the candidates on the constraint of 2020-2022 launch windows. Unknown asteroid environment, shape, rotation rate, topography, and gravity field will result in complicated and time-consuming operation in the vicinity of asteroid. The autonomous trajectory programming and data processing on-board will guide craft to approach the 100m diameter target asteroid from 10000km faraway and to map the shape and pole position. Then, slowly km-distance flyby trajectories are designed to estimate the rough mass. Global topography and mapping are completed by a low orbit for very high-resolution characterization of the surface, and to select the land site. The science data from potential thermal emission spectrometer and visible/IR spectrometer is sent to Earth for mineralogical, water, and organics evaluation. Finally, a mini rover is designed to land on the asteroid surface in a low-cost hopping way and explor