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Register a new userAssembled Kinetic Impactor for Deflecting Asteroids via Combining the Spacecraft with the Launch Vehicle Final Stage
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Asteroid Impacts pose a major threat to all life on the Earth. Deflecting the asteroid from the impact trajectory is an important way to mitigate the threat. A kinetic impactor remains to be the most feasible method to deflect the asteroid. However, due to the constraint of the launch capability, an impactor with the limited mass can only produce a very limited amount of velocity increment for the asteroid. In order to improve the deflection efficiency of the kinetic impactor strategy, this paper proposed a new concept called the Assembled Kinetic Impactor (AKI), which is combining the spacecraft with the launch vehicle final stage. By making full use of the mass of the launch vehicle final stage, the mass of the impactor will be increased, which will cause the improvement of the deflection efficiency. According to the technical data of Long March 5 (CZ-5) launch vehicle, the missions of deflecting Bennu are designed to demonstrate the power of the AKI concept. Simulation results show that, compared with the Classic Kinetic Impactor (CKI, performs spacecraft-rocket separation), the addition of the mass of the launch vehicle final stage can increase the deflection distance to more than 3 times, and reduce the launch lead-time by at least 15 years. With the requirement of the same deflection distance, the addition of the mass of the launch vehicle final stage can reduce the number of launches to 1/3 of that of the number of CKI launches. The AKI concept makes it possible to defend Bennu-like large asteroids by a no-nuclear technique within 10-year launch lead-time. At the same time, for a single CZ-5, the deflection distance of a 140 m diameter asteroid within 10-year launch lead-time, can be increased from less than 1 Earth radii to more than 1 Earth radii.
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Asteroid impacts pose a major threat to all life on Earth. The age of the dinosaurs was abruptly ended by a 10-km-diameter asteroid. Currently, a nuclear device is the only means of deflecting large Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) away from an Earth-impacting trajectory. The Enhanced Kinetic Impactor (EKI) concept is proposed to deflect large PHAs via maneuvering space rocks. First, an unmanned spacecraft is launched to rendezvous with an intermediate Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA). Then, more than one hundred tons of rocks are collected from the NEA as the EKI. The NEA can also be captured as the EKI if the NEA is very small. Finally, the EKI is maneuvered to impact the PHA at a high speed, resulting in a significant deflection of the PHA. For example, to deflect Apophis, as much as 200 t of rocks could be collected from a NEA as the EKI based on existing engineering capabilities. The EKI can produce a velocity increment (delta-v) of 39.81 mm/s in Apophis, thereby increasing the minimum geocentric distance during the close encounter in 2029 by 1,866.93 km. This mission can be completed in 3.96 years with a propellant cost of 2.98 t. Compared with a classic kinetic impactor, the deflection distance can be increased one order of magnitude. The EKI concept breaks through the limitation of the ground-based launch capability, which can significantly increase the mass of the impactor. We anticipate that our research will be a starting point for efficient planetary defense against large PHAs.
The five classical Uranian moons are possible ocean worlds that exhibit bizarre geologic landforms, hinting at recent surface-interior communication. However, Uranus classical moons, as well as its ring moons and irregular satellites, remain poorly understood. We assert that a Flagship-class orbiter is needed to explore the Uranian satellites.
An international group of scientists has begun planning for the Planet Formation Imager (PFI, www.planetformationimager.org), a next-generation infrared interferometer array with the primary goal of imaging the active phases of planet formation in nearby star forming regions and taking planetary system snapshots of young systems to understand exoplanet architectures. PFI will be sensitive to warm dust emission using mid-infrared capabilities made possible by precise fringe tracking in the near-infrared. An L/M band beam combiner will be especially sensitive to thermal emission from young exoplanets (and their circumplanetary disks) with a high spectral resolution mode to probe the kinematics of CO and H2O gas. In this brief White Paper, we summarize the main science goals of PFI, define a baseline PFI architecture that can achieve those goals, and identify key technical challenges that must be overcome before the dreams of PFI can be realized within the typical cost envelope of a major observatory. We also suggest activities over the next decade at the flagship US facilities (CHARA, NPOI, MROI) that will help make the Planet Formation Imager facility a reality. The key takeaway is that infrared interferometry will require new experimental telescope designs that can scale to 8 m-class with the potential to reduce per area costs by x10, a breakthrough that would also drive major advances across astronomy.
There is a long history of radio telescopes being used to augment the radio antennas regularly used to conduct telemetry, tracking, and command of deep space spacecraft. Radio telescopes are particularly valuable during short-duration mission critical events, such as planetary landings, or when a mission lifetime itself is short, such as a probe into a giant planets atmosphere. By virtue of its high sensitivity and frequency coverage, the next-generation Very Large Array would be a powerful addition to regular spacecraft ground systems. Further, the science focus of many of these deep-space missions provides a ground truth in the solar system that complements other aspects of the ngVLAs science case, such as the formation of planets in proto-planetary disks.
One source of noise for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will be time-varying changes of the space environment in the form of solar wind particles and photon pressure from fluctuating solar irradiance. The approximate magnitude of these effects can be estimated from the average properties of the solar wind and the solar irradiance. We use data taken by the ACE (Advanced Compton Explorer) satellite and the VIRGO (Variability of solar IRradiance and Gravity Oscillations) instrument on the SOHO satellite over an entire solar cycle to calculate the forces due to solar wind and photon pressure irradiance on the LISA spacecraft. We produce a realistic model of the effects of these environmental noise sources and their variation over the expected course of the LISA mission.
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