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Arguments for a Mission to an Asteroid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

H. Alfvén  and
G. Arrhenius
H. Alfvén
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
G. Arrhenius
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego

Extract

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With respect to their orbital parameters, the known asteroids fall into different groups:

(1) Main belt asteroids orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Most of them have semimajor axes a in the range 2.0 < a > 3.5 AU.

(2) Asteroids outside the main belt form a number of different groups, such as the Trojans, Hildas, etc.

(3) Mars-crossing asteroids are bodies with low a values and perihelia inside the Martian orbit; in several cases they are inside Earth’s orbit. They are the closest neighbors in space of the Earth-Moon system. A list of them is given by Marsden, table II. We select from these the ones with eccentricities in the range 0.2 to 0.4; they will be referred to as the Eros group, named after its largest member. The arguments for a mission to an asteroid refer especially to the Eros group as a first target.

Type
Part III-Possible Space Missions and Future Work
Information
International Astronomical Union Colloquium , Volume 12: Physical Studies of Minor Planets , 1971 , pp. 473 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © NASA 1971

References

Arrhenius, G., Liang, S., Macdougall, D., Wilkening, L., Bhandari, N., Bhat, S., Lai, D., Rajagopaln, G., Tamhane, A.S., and Venkatavaradan, V.S. 1971, The Exposure History of the Apollo 12 Regolith. Proc. Apollo 12 Lunar Sci. Conf. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 35, suppl. 1.Google Scholar