EXTREMA: Ballistic capture sets at Mars with initial epoch December 9, 2023

EXTREMA (short for Engineering Extremely Rare Events in Astrodynamics for Deep-Space Missions in Autonomy) enables self-driving spacecraft, challenging the current paradigm under which spacecraft are piloted in the interplanetary space. Deep-space guidance, navigation, and control applied in a complex scenario is the subject of EXTREMA, which wants to engineer ballistic capture in a totally autonomous fashion. EXTREMA is erected on three pillars. Pillar 1 is on autonomous navigation. Pillar 2 involves autonomous guidance and control. Pillar 3 deals with autonomous ballistic capture, the focus of this work. The project has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant in 2019.

In Pillar 3 it is investigated how a spacecraft can attain ballistic capture in autonomy. Ballistic capture is an event that occurs in extremely-rare occasions, and requires acquiring a proper state (position, velocity) far away from the target planet [1]. Massive numerical simulations are required to find the specific conditions that support capture [2]. On average, 1 out of 10,000 conditions explored by the algorithm grants capture [3]. The union of these points defines the capture set, which in turn is used to find the capture corridors: these are streams of orbits that can be targeted far away from the planet and that guarantee ballistic capture.

The data set is made of two items containing initial conditions of weakly-stable, unstable, crash, moon-crash, and capture sets at Mars. The first is a text file containing initial conditions used to compute time regressions. The second item is a text file containing 100,000 initial conditions generated randomly in the search space and used to compute the quality criterion of the differential algebra mapping. All initial conditions have initial epoch 09 DEC 2023 00:45:18.363 (UTC). The grid of initial conditions is built to maximize the capture ratio for Mars (see Figure 10 in [3]). Initial conditions are propagated in high-fidelity. The equations of motion of the restricted n-body problem including solar radiation pressure are considered.

For additional information about the EXTREMA project visit the page extrema.polimi.it.

The data set is associated to the following journal article:

    Article: Stable sets mapping with Taylor differential algebra with application to ballistic capture orbits around Mars

    Journal: Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy

    Authors: Thomas Caleb (corresponding author: [e-mail]), Gianmario Merisio, Pierluigi di Lizia, and Francesco Topputo

    DOI: 10.1007/s10569-022-10090-8

References
[1] F. Topputo and E. Belbruno,'Earth–Mars transfers with ballistic capture', Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, Vol. 121, No. 4, 2015, pp. 329–346. DOI: 10.1007/s10569-015-9605-8.
[2] F. Topputo and E. Belbruno, 'Computation of weak stability boundaries: Sun–Jupiter system', Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy, Vol. 105, No. 1-3, 2009, pp. 3–17. DOI: 10.1007/s10569-009-9222-5.
[3] Z.-F. Luo and F. Topputo, 'Analysis of ballistic capture in Sun–planet models', Advances in Space Research, Vol. 56, No. 6, 2015, pp. 1030–1041. DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2015.05.042.