Generalized flyby trajectories around elongated minor celestial bodies as a rotating mass dipole

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to understand the common characteristics of the generalized flyby trajectory around natural elongated bodies. Such flyby trajectories provide a short-term mechanism to clear away vicinal objects or temporally capture ejecta into circling orbits. The gravitational potential of elongated bodies is described by a unified approximate model, i.e., the rotating mass dipole which is two point masses connected with a constant massless rod. The energy power is used to illustrate the flyby effect in terms of the instantaneous orbital energy. The essential of the single flyby trajectory is studied analytically, and the relationship between the flyby trajectory and its Jacobi integral is also illustrated. Sample trajectories are given to show the variational trend of the energy increment with respect to different orbital periapsides. The distribution of natural ejecting orbits is presented by varying the parameters of the approximate model.