دانلود رایگان مقاله محیط شهاب سنگ در مسیر انتقال به مریخ

ABSTRACT

The possibility of meteoroid impact is one of the main threats to the interplanetary missions. Although the meteoroids in the interplanetary space have very small masses, their velocities are extremely large and can produce highly energetic impacts. In this paper, a specific method to analyze the meteoroid environment on the transfer trajectories to Mars has been developed, by determination of the closest approach situation for a large sample of meteoroid orbits. This allows to analyze, not only the integral flux of meteoroids on the spacecraft surfaces, but also the specific kinematics for every single approach and the distributions of important variables such as relative velocity and its projections on specific directions such as instantaneous directions to Mars, Earth, Sun and apex. The obtained results give the quantitative and qualitative estimate of these variables which are separated for different populations of interplanetary meteoroids. The most exposed parts of the spacecraft on the Hohmann transfer to Mars are directed toward Mars, apex and anti-Earth point while the Sun and anti-Sun directions are symmetrically threatened. This gives the frame for the mission design and impact risk assessment and for the development of mathematical models of the behavior of the new spacecraft protection materials under impact loading and also for their experimental examination.

5. Conclusions

From the above analysis several conclusions can be drawn: • Analyzed populations have very different distributions of the velocities at the points of closest approach and thus in the case of possible collisions. • Parts of the spacecraft directed toward the apex and Mars are more exposed to the possible impacts than the opposite sides. The exception is Asteroidal population for which “anti-Mars” direction is dominant. • The situation with the instantaneous direction toward the Earth is opposed from that of Mars except for Halo population. Generally, all presented distributions for Halo population are very different from other 4 populations. This is obviously due to equal number of prograde and retrograde orbits in Halo population. • Sun and “anti-Sun” directions are relatively symmetrically exposed to possible impacts. • There is a large concentration of the points corresponding to MOIDs in the vicinity of the perihelia of meteoroid orbits. This is particularly true for highly eccentric orbits meaning that these meteoroids are the most dangerous due to high velocities in the vicinity of the perihelia. This is the most important conclusion from this analysis which can have impact on the general analysis of the collisions in the Solar system.