{"id":9424,"date":"2023-11-09T08:07:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T08:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/power2innovate.com\/how-to-make-asteroid-landings-safer\/"},"modified":"2023-11-09T08:07:25","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T08:07:25","slug":"how-to-make-asteroid-landings-safer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/power2innovate.com\/how-to-make-asteroid-landings-safer\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make asteroid landings safer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\n \n Artist\u2019s depiction of the OSIRIS-Rex sample return mission barely touching Bennu, the asteroid is successfully sampled. Credit: NASA Goddard \n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Landing safely on an asteroid is no mean feat. Despite several recent successes, there have also been notable failures\u2014most famously, the Philae lander to 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Admittedly, that was an attempt to land on a comet rather than an asteroid, but those two bodies share many of the same landing hazards.<\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n<\/section>\n
One of the most prevalent problems is “inhomogenous” gravity. Offering a solution, researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China recently published a paper in Aerospace Science and Technology<\/i> detailing a framework for performing “soft landings” on asteroids, which might help make exploring these rocky worlds much more accessible.\n<\/p>\n
First, it would be helpful to understand the difference between a “hard” landing on an asteroid and a “soft” landing. A hard landing consists of the spacecraft, either in a controlled or uncontrolled descent, landing with some force on the asteroid’s surface. Typically, this causes some amount of damage to both the asteroid and potentially even the lander itself. So far, all successful asteroid landings have been “hard,” though some included something akin to a grappling hook that allowed them to attach themselves to the rocky surface and lower themself down.\n<\/p>\n
In contrast, a “soft” landing would have a probe slowly descend to the asteroid’s surface, landing on it with little to no impact and causing little to no disturbance in the surroundings. On asteroids, this is relatively inexpensive in terms of fuel, as the gravity, and hence the force needed to hover above them is minuscule on these worlds. However, even that minuscule amount of gravity can make the landings difficult.\n<\/p>\n
That’s because gravity varies dramatically based on various physical characteristics of the asteroids, such as their shape, the density or material composition of different parts of the asteroid, and its rotational speed. Trying to come up with an algorithm that can successfully take all of that data as input and calculate a reasonable soft-landing trajectory routine has so far remained out of the reach of our robotic emissaries to these miniature worlds.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n \n \n <\/p>\n