Meteoroid environment on the transfer trajectories to Mars

Abstract

The possibility of meteoroid impact is one of the main threats to the interplanetary missions. Although the meteoroids in the interplanetary space have very small masses, their velocities are extremely large and can produce highly energetic impacts. In this paper, a specific method to analyze the meteoroid environment on the transfer trajectories to Mars has been developed, by determination of the closest approach situation for a large sample of meteoroid orbits. This allows to analyze, not only the integral flux of meteoroids on the spacecraft surfaces, but also the specific kinematics for every single approach and the distributions of important variables such as relative velocity and its projections on specific directions such as instantaneous directions to Mars, Earth, Sun and apex. The obtained results give the quantitative and qualitative estimate of these variables which are separated for different populations of interplanetary meteoroids. The most exposed parts of the spacecraft on the Hohmann transfer to Mars are directed toward Mars, apex and anti-Earth point while the Sun and anti-Sun directions are symmetrically threatened. This gives the frame for the mission design and impact risk assessment and for the development of mathematical models of the behavior of the new spacecraft protection materials under impact loading and also for their experimental examination.