Trajectory & maneuver design of the NEA Scout solar sail mission.

The Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEA Scout) mission aimed to deliver a 6U CubeSat to a slow flyby of a Near Earth Asteroid using a solar sail as the primary propulsion system. NEA Scout was launched as a secondary payload aboard Artemis I, on November 16, 2022, but communication with the spacecraft was not achieved. This paper describes the target asteroid selection and the innovative trajectory and maneuver design for the NEA Scout mission, including cold gas maneuvers, multiple lunar flybys, solar sail thrusting, and design margins for solar sailing. The resulting trajectory design tools, solutions, and analyses are potentially applicable to future solar sail missions. • The pre-launch trajectory and maneuver design framework for NEA Scout is outlined. • Solar sail transfers are found to a Near-Earth asteroid from an Artemis 1 launch. • A broad search algorithm examines the entire catalog of Near-Earth asteroids. • Reference end-to-end trajectories for NEA Scout are computed automatically. • A new solar sail margin philosophy is also successfully applied to the trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]