TRAJECTORY OPTIONS FOR LOW-COST MISSIONS TO ASTEROIDS

We consider a wide variety of gravity-assist trajectories using Venus, Earth and Mars to obtain low launch energy trajectories to four large asteroids in the main belt. These trajectories are constructed by ana lytic and numeric search techniques. We optimize promising trajectorie s for minimum total Delta V and search for additional (nontargeted) as teroid flybys. Several optimized opportunities with multiple asteroid flybys are reported, followed by a discussion of general characteristi cs of the various trajectory types. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.