Abstract
Main-belt asteroids are of great interest for scientific exploration and engineering implementation. This paper investigates the accessibility of main-belt asteroids and the trajectories to reach them. The effects of gravity-assist maneuvers on the orbital energy and the orientation of orbital plane are explained. The Tisserand graph is employed to determine that Mars is the most useful gravity-assist body for main-belt asteroid missions. An assessment of the accessibility for all the main-belt asteroids that are over 100 km in diameter is carried out. The global minimum velocity increments of direct transfer trajectory and gravity-assist trajectories are obtained for each candidate target. Several proposed asteroid missions with launch dates between 2020 and 2026 are presented. Ballistic and low-thrust trajectories to the asteroid Flora via two Mars gravity assists are discussed, and the performance of the two gravity assists is analyzed.
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