Robust Guidance for Surface Characterization of Minor Bodies

In recent years, interest in exploring minor bodies has increased significantly. Studying these objects is important for planetary defense against potential impacts and for the valuable scientific and economic opportunities they offer. However, despite their high relevance, minor bodies exploration is dampened by the challenges arising when operating a spacecraft in their close-proximity environment. This work proposes an efficient two-step methodology for generating robust inspection trajectories for surface mapping using impulsive guidance. In the first step, a computationally efficient sampling-based method is used to solve a deterministic optimization problem, which maximizes the scientific return of the trajectory, modeled as the observation of surface regions under specific observation requirements. The output of this stage is provided to the trajectory refinement step, which ensures robustness under the considered trajectory and minimizes fuel consumption. The methodology is tested numerically for Close-Proximity Operations (CPO) around asteroid Itokawa. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed guidance in achieving the objective of surface characterization.