Multiple Asteroid Flyby Missions

Abstract

The use of spacecraft for studying the physical properties of the asteroid belt can be approached in several ways. Certainly the simplest approach is to send a spacecraft into the asteroid belt and measure the effects of the environment encountered; this has the advantage of not requiring a vehicle to be targeted to any particular destination. With such an approach, properties may be obtained for those classes of objects that are populous enough to provide a significant number of encounters within the measurement range of the spacecraft. Unfortunately, the large asteroids do not constitute such a class of objects; the probability of an undirected spacecraft passing within measurement range of an asteroid having a diameter of 1 or more km is negligible.