Rapid-Response Reconnaissance Architecture Design for Planetary Defense with Nested Trajectory Optimization
摘要
Reconnaissance is a vital component in a comprehensive planetary defense mitigation strategy—aimed at preventing or reducing the impact threat posed by celestial objects on close-approach trajectories to Earth. It provides decision-makers with critical information on the physical and orbital properties of a near-Earth object (NEO), enabling better assessment of size, composition, and trajectory. This study investigates how to optimally pre-position a fleet of reconnaissance spacecraft prior to the discovery of a specific hazardous NEO. It evaluates response timelines and mission success rates for combinations of spacecraft launched from Earth and those maneuvering from pre-deployed locations within the Sun-Earth system. A synthetic population of asteroid threats is used to generate performance metrics for each candidate architecture. This study employs a nested multi-objective optimization framework coupling the fast elitist non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) for reconnaissance architecture design with particle swarm optimization (PSO) for transfer trajectory optimization. The developed Pareto-optimal architecture designs have trade-offs among response time, cost, and flyby success rate. Mission constraints consider approach lighting, flyby velocity, and