Ricerc@Sapienza

The dynamical behaviours of spacecrafts moving around uniformly rotating asteroids are investigated in this work. Based on the generalized inertia integrals of asteroids, the expression of the disturbing potential is derived as a trigonometric series in terms of the mean anomaly, geographical longitude of ascending node and argument of pericentre. In thismanner, averaged models can be achieved by eliminating the short-period terms or both the short- and long-period terms in the disturbing function.

Kinetic impact may be the most reliable and easily implemented method to deflect hazardous asteroids using current technology. Depending on warning time, it can be effective on asteroids with diameters of a few hundred meters. Current impact deflection research often focuses on the orbital dynamics of asteroids. In this paper, we use the ejection outcome of a general oblique impact to calculate how an asteroid’s rotational and translational state changes after impact. The results demonstrate how small impactors affect the dynamical state of small asteroids having a diameter of about 100 m.