CONCEPTUAL DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF PLANETARY DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY (PDT) DEMONSTRATION MISSIONS

摘要

When the warning time of the impact threat of a near-Earth object (NEO) is short, the use of nuclear explosives may become necessary to safeguard the Earth. A variety of nuclear options, such as standoff, surface contact, and subsurface explosions, for mitigating the impact threats of NEOs have been proposed and studied in the past two decades. Eventually in the near future, an actual flight demonstration mission may become necessary to verify and validate the overall effectiveness and robustness of such various nuclear options and the associated space technologies. This paper presents the conceptual mission architecture design of such flight validation missions with a consideration of three mission cost classifications (e.g., $500M, $1B, and $1.5B).