The Dynamical Environment of Dawn at Vesta
Pasquale Tricarico, Mark V. Sykes

TL;DR
This paper analyzes the complex gravitational environment around asteroid Vesta encountered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, focusing on orbital dynamics, resonance trapping, and implications for surface operations and interior structure insights.
Contribution
It provides a detailed modeling of Vesta's gravitational field and its effects on Dawn's orbit, including resonance trapping and operational constraints for low-altitude mapping.
Findings
Resonance trapping near the 1:1 orbital and rotational period is possible.
Gravitational perturbations limit low-altitude operations to about 400 km radius.
Different gravity models can be distinguished during Dawn's mapping orbits.
Abstract
Dawn is the first NASA mission to operate in the vicinity of the two most massive asteroids in the main belt, Ceres and Vesta. This double-rendezvous mission is enabled by the use of low-thrust solar electric propulsion. Dawn will arrive at Vesta in 2011 and will operate in its vicinity for approximately one year. Vesta's mass and non-spherical shape, coupled with its rotational period, presents very interesting challenges to a spacecraft that depends principally upon low-thrust propulsion for trajectory-changing maneuvers. The details of Vesta's high-order gravitational terms will not be determined until after Dawn's arrival at Vesta, but it is clear that their effect on Dawn operations creates the most complex operational environment for a NASA mission to date. Gravitational perturbations give rise to oscillations in Dawn's orbital radius, and it is found that trapping of the…
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