Spacecraft Mission Design for the Mitigation of the 2017 PDC Hypothetical Asteroid Threat

Abstract: This paper presents a detailed mission design analysis results for the 2017 Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario, documented at https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/ pd/cs/pdc17/. The mission design includes campaigns for both reconnaissance (flyby or rendezvous) of the asteroid (to characterize it and the nature of the threat it poses to Earth) and mitigation of the asteroid, via kinetic impactor deflection, nuclear explosive device (NED) deflection, or NED disrupti…