Sensitivity Analysis of Orbital Motion Around 2016 HO3 to the Uncertainties of Gravity and Solar Radiation Pressure

For robust mission design, this study investigates the robustness of orbital motion in the vicinity of asteroid 2016 HO3 considering the uncertainties of the central gravity of HO3 and the solar radiation pressure (SRP). By applying the automatic domain splitting (ADS) algorithm, these uncertainties are propagated along the orbital motion and their effects on orbits with different geometries are investigated by evaluating the first split time of the orbits. Moreover, the number of splits and bounds of the state flow are also evaluated along the propagation as another criteria of indicating motion robustness and practical stability. The polar orbits are discovered to be more robust than the equatorial motion and other inclined motion. Specifically, the solar terminator orbit (STO) is bounded within a small range and is found to have the best robustness among all the polar motions, which can be used for practical mission purpose. The results are validated against numerical simulations and prove that robust motion exists even for very small bodies with weak gravity field. Therefore, this work contributes to systematically identify the robust motion near an asteroid considering the gravity uncertainty and the SRP perturbation for real mission operations from a new perspective.