Trajectory Design and Economic Analysis of Asteroid Mining Missions to Asteroid 2014 EK24

Several studies have been conducted on the economic analysis of mining near-Earth asteroids for resources for use in Earth orbit. While these studies use detailed economic figures of merit, they often use many invalid assumptions in the trajectory design. Factors such as the energy and propellant requirements are estimated with analytic methods, however, the stay-time at the asteroid and the spacing of repeated launch opportunities are not taken into account. The work outlined in this paper attempts to combine detailed trajectory design methods with newly defined economic figures of merit to improve the economic assessment of asteroid mining missions. The study focuses on asteroid 2014 EK24, a near-Earth asteroid with very Earth-similar orbital properties.CITATION:Dorrington, S, Kinkaid, N and Olsen, J, 2015. Trajectory design and economic analysis of asteroid mining missions to asteroid 2014 EK24, in Proceedings Third International Future Mining Conference, pp 281–288 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).