Development of Techniques Enabling Suborbital Small Object Capture Around Low Gravity Asteroids

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel, low-cost method for collecting asteroid samples by deploying nanospacecraft to chase and retrieve ejected particles, offering an alternative to traditional touch-down techniques.

Contribution

It introduces a new sample collection approach utilizing particle ejections, reducing mission complexity and cost compared to existing methods like Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx.

Findings

Particles ejected from Bennu can be tracked for hours.

Nanospacecraft can potentially chase and collect these particles.

The mission concept demonstrates feasibility for low-cost asteroid sampling.

Abstract

The exploration of small body asteroids provides direct access to the primitive building blocks of our solar system. Sample and return missions enable chemical and radioisotope studies which not only provide evidence for the formation of the solar system, but also a basic understanding of where resources might be found for future exploitation. The touch-down and sample techniques established by Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx accomplish this mission by physically touching down on the asteroid and collecting samples into a basket extended via a probe from the bottom of the spacecraft. This technique has been demonstrated to work, but contains a high cost in both mission operations as well as the size and complexity of the collection mechanism itself. This paper explores an alternative sample and return technique by exploiting the recent discovery of regolith particle ejections from Bennu. Particles ejected from the surface of Bennu are typically 1 cm in size and spend several hours in flight, suggesting the possibility that nanospacecraft deployed from the mother-spacecraft could chase down, collect and return with the sample with minimal sensor and delta-V capability. Key aspects of this mission are developed to reduce risk, and an overall mission concept is developed to establish plausibility.