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<p>It is challenging to measure the mass of an asteroid in a high-speed spacecraft flyby, especially for the small 50-140 m diameter asteroids that are the primary concerns for planetary defense. Prior work on improving the mass measurement capability of flybys has focused on deploying single-use test-masses from a host spacecraft and tracking them using relative measurements. Instead of test-masses, this research studies the possible mass measurement performance from using multiple full spacecraft to perform the flyby. We find that with interspacecraft measurement accuracies of 0.1 mm/s for range-rate and 1 m for range, four spacecraft can measure the mass of 140 m asteroids to better than 15<InlineEquation ID="IEq1"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">\(\%\)</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <mo>%</mo> </math></EquationSource> </InlineEquation> 1<InlineEquation ID="IEq2"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">\(\sigma \)</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <mi>σ</mi> </math></EquationSource> </InlineEquation> for flyby speeds up to 20 km/s, or 50 m asteroids up to speeds of 5 km/s. With a better intersatellite range-rate measurement accuracy of 0.1 <InlineEquation ID="IEq3"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">\(\mu \)</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"><math> <mi>μ</mi> </math></EquationSource> </InlineEquation>m/s, four spacecraft can measure the mass of 50 m asteroids for speeds up to 20 km/s as well. These results demonstrate the capabilities required to measure asteroid masses in most planetary defense scenarios.</p>

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Mass Estimation of Small Asteroids during Fast Flybys using Swarms of Spacecraft

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月2日

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  • Rylie Bull,
  • Jay McMahon,
  • Justin Atchison

摘要

It is challenging to measure the mass of an asteroid in a high-speed spacecraft flyby, especially for the small 50-140 m diameter asteroids that are the primary concerns for planetary defense. Prior work on improving the mass measurement capability of flybys has focused on deploying single-use test-masses from a host spacecraft and tracking them using relative measurements. Instead of test-masses, this research studies the possible mass measurement performance from using multiple full spacecraft to perform the flyby. We find that with interspacecraft measurement accuracies of 0.1 mm/s for range-rate and 1 m for range, four spacecraft can measure the mass of 140 m asteroids to better than 15 \(\%\) % 1 \(\sigma \) σ for flyby speeds up to 20 km/s, or 50 m asteroids up to speeds of 5 km/s. With a better intersatellite range-rate measurement accuracy of 0.1 \(\mu \) μ m/s, four spacecraft can measure the mass of 50 m asteroids for speeds up to 20 km/s as well. These results demonstrate the capabilities required to measure asteroid masses in most planetary defense scenarios.