Detecting minimoons in the Earth-Moon system with microsatellite compatible technologies
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Minimoons, Earth’s temporarily-captured orbiters, are excellent candidates for asteroidmining technology demonstrations and general asteroid studies because of their relativelylong stay in the vicinity of Earth. In this thesis, microsatellite compatible surveillancetechnologies are discussed and the suitability of various locations in the Earth-Moon systemfor minimoon surveillance is examined. This is done to acquire knowledge on whichtype of an orbit a minimoon-surveying-microsatellite could be placed on.The instantaneous visible fraction of the minimoon steady-state population is the figureof merit when comparing surveillance systems and locations. The visible fraction is estimatedby simulating the distribution of visible minimoons in the sky-plane. The objectsin the simulated sky-plane are synthetic minimoons, which are generated in large numbersaccording to the geocentric 6-dimensional-residence-time-distribution of minimoons, andthus, the bin values of the sky-plane distribution can be thought of as instantaneous probabilitiesfor containing a detectable minimoon within certain ecliptic latitude-longituderange.The visible fractions are estimated for various locations with given surveillance systemperformance. Multiple microsatellite compatible surveillance technology configurationsare examined as well as the e↵ect of limiting magnitude and maximum angular velocity.Minimoons are faint and fast moving objects and thus the use of synthetic tracking algorithmis beneficial and considered. Only visual band surveillance systems with aperturesizes less than 0.30 m and minimoons with diameter sizes larger than 0.50 m are consideredin the simulations.
Author: Matias Kidron
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3008024737