Reachability Maps Generation for Opportunistic Targets Interception from Cis-Lunar Orbits

Timely interception of interesting small bodies, not easily detectable quite in advance to properly prepare a space mission, still represents a bottleneck in visiting transient pristine comets and deflecting dangerous asteroids. The paper proposes a methodology to rank the celestial sphere zones in terms of reachability, having, among the control variables, the departure orbit as well; the possibility to park in cis-lunar environment, ready to depart as soon as a relevant target is detected is here supposed. Performances involved in the transfer that mostly influence preliminary mission analysis are clustered in a ranking index to support the decision making process.