In this thesis, the possibility of enabling space-mining for the upcoming decade is explored. Making use of recently-proven reusable rockets, we envision a fleet of spacecraft capable of reaching Near-Earth asteroids. To analyze this idea, the goal of this problem is to maximize the asteroid mass retrieved within a spacecraft max life span. Explicitly, the maximum lifetime of the spacecraft fleet is set at 30 years. A fuel supply-chain is proposed and designed so that each spacecraft is refueled before departing for each asteroid. To maximize access to the number of asteroids and retrievable mass for each mission, we propose launching each mission from an orbit with low escape velocity. The L2-Halo orbit at the libration point in the Earth-Moon system was selected due to its easy access from Low-Earth Orbit and for a cislunar synergy with NASA Gateway. Using data from NASA SmallBody and CNEOS databases, we investigated NEAs in the period between 2030 and 2060 could be captured in the ecliptic plane and returned to L2-Halo with two approaches, MARM-1 and MARM-2. Together, these databases provide all information for every asteroid's close approach known today. Returning the asteroid as a whole is explored in the MARM-1 method, while MARM-2 evaluates the possibility of reaching larger asteroids and returning a fragment of their masses, such that it optimizes the available cargo weight per time of flight of each mission. The following results are compared with previous work from the community. The results show a 96% reduction in the cost per kg, with an enormous increase in retrieved mass. With these results, this thesis shows that not solely energy or dynamic optimization will be responsible for proving space mining feasibility, but rather a combination of those and business best practices. Proving feasibility for space mining is a complex and immense problem. Although this thesis opens new possibilities for future work on the field and sparkes the interest of private endeavors, the final solution for this problem still requires additional exploration. / M.S. / In this thesis, the possibility of enabling space-mining for the upcoming decade is explored. Making use of recently-proven reusable rockets, we envision a fleet of spacecraft capable of reaching Near-Earth asteroids, NEAs. To analyze this idea, the goal of this problem is to maximize the asteroid mass retrieved within a spacecraft max life span. Explicitly, the maximum lifetime of the spacecraft fleet is set at 30 years. A fuel supply-chain is proposed and designed so that each spacecraft is refueled before departing for each asteroid. To maximize access to the number of asteroids and retrievable mass for each mission, we propose launching each mission from an orbit with low escape velocity. A location after the Moon, at the L2-Halo orbit, was selected due to its easy access from Low-Earth Orbit and for a synergy with the proposed new space station at the Moon orbit. Using data from NASA databases, we investigated the asteroids in the period between 2030 and 2060 that could be captured and returned with two approaches, MARM-1 and MARM-2. Together, these databases provide all information for every asteroid's close approach known today. Returning the asteroid as a whole is explored in the MARM-1 method, while MARM-2 evaluates the possibility of reaching larger asteroids and returning a fragment of their masses, such that it optimizes the available cargo weight per time of flight of each mission. The following results are compared with previous work from the community. The results show a 96% reduction in the cost per kg, with an enormous increase in retrieved mass. With these results, this thesis shows that not solely energy or dynamic optimization will be responsible for proving space mining feasibility, but rather a combination of those and business best practices. Proving feasibility for space mining is a complex and immense problem. Although this thesis opens new possibilities for future work on the field and sparkes the interest of private endeavors, the final solution for this problem still requires additional exploration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/98838 |
| Date | 11 May 2020 |
| Creators | Gargioni, Gustavo |
| Contributors | Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Black, Jo, Ross, Shane D., England, Scott L. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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