§ 1.9 - Specific NEO targets and missions

Our table below lists the requirements for missions to particular asteroids in the published literature. There are probably many more analyses which are unpublished to date. If you know of any, please forward the information or source to us.

A list of NEO's can be found at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html though that site does not give delta-v analysis for missions, and is not interested in such issues. (As of July 2001, their tables were still not formatted.) This list may be useful for calculating transport requirements, and checking to see if anyone's analyzed these targets for potential missions.

Another issue is an educated guess about the properties of the target as analyzed by telescopic spectroscopy. Is there a source on the internet for this data? Shall we do it here?

The following are a list of particularly interesting asteroids:

Target	Outbound delta-v from LEO (m/s)	Outbound delta-t (days)	Date	Inbound delta-v (m/s)	Inbound Delta-t (days)	Date	Total delta-v to HEEO (m/s)	Total Delta-t	Lunar gravity assist?	Source	Comments
Moon	6000	3	any	2500	1	any	8500	short	n.a.
Phobos-Deimos	4400	270	biannual	1800	270	biannual	6200	540		Scarbrough (1999)
Mars	4800	270	biannual	5700	270	biannual	10,500	540		Scarbrough (1999)
1982 DB Nereus	4450	210		60	480		4510	690		Lewis & Lewis (1987)	From Scarbrough. C? type from spectra?
1982 XB	5300	220		220	470		5770	690		Lewis & Lewis (1987)	From Scarbrough
1982 HR	5300	180		260	320		5560	500		Lewis & Lewis (1987)	From Scarbrough
1980 AA	5270	390		390	290		5660	680		Lewis & Lewis (1987)	From Scarbrough
1998 KY26	small	small		small	small					Ostro	30 m diameter, water rich from radar data
1991 JW	6873	fast	2009-12-05	4705	fast	2009-11-18	10.89	190		T.D. Jones et al. (1994)	Human mission to/from surface, not HEEO
1979 VA Wilson-Harrington								~ 5 years		Kuck	Comet in 1949

Notes: Gaps in the table need to be filled in. Trip times can be improved at the cost of delta-v. Delta-v varies for dates with NEOs with large cycles. Future changes may eliminate the column on source, turn it into superscripts in other columns, once we get multiple sources

A table comparison is only a rough comparison. The context and details of each one of these cases needs to be discussed. For example, the mission to 1991 JW was optimized to minimize travel time due to human missions, and the return delta-v is to Earth's surface, not to HEEO as the table column states. It's worth pointing out that the total delta-v is less than to the lunar surface. It is suggested that this be a steppingstone mission to Mars in the NASA program, rather than a "return to the Moon" as a steppingstone.

This page was last updated: 30 July 2001

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Projects to Employ Resources of the Moon and Asteroids Near Earth in the Near Term