An Earth Trojans search mission with asteroid flybys and rendezvous to 2010TK7

Abstract

In this paper, a mission about Earth’s Trojan asteroids is proposed, which is a rendezvous mission to 2010TK7 with two flybys to Near Earth asteroids (NEAs), and then cruise around L4 point with a survey for potential Earth’s Trojan asteroids around L4. The flyby targets are searched in NEAs first. Flyby sequence 1949 ​MA-2003LC5 is chosen among the search results. The low-thrust transfer trajectories are designed with two parts using indirect method. One part is the transfer trajectory corresponding to the Earth-1949MA-2003LC5-2010TK7 flyby sequence, and the other is the transfer trajectory from 2010TK7 to the cruise orbit. Intermediate orbit is designed to observe asteroid 2010TK7. The cruise orbit is a quasi-periodic orbit restricted in the stable region of Earth’s Trojan asteroids so as to search more Earth’s Trojan asteroids. For a spacecraft with initial mass of 300 ​kg, the total fuel consumption of this mission is 42.184%.