Orbital maneuvers for asteroids using genetic algorithm

Abstract

Near Earth objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids that orbit the vicinity of the Earth. The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due in large part to their status as remnants remaining relatively unchanged from the process of forming the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago, and some asteroids are made of precious metals such as platinum. Genetic algorithms are a particular class of evolutionary algorithms that use techniques inspired by evolutionary biology such as heredity, mutation, natural selection, and recombination. They can also be defined as global optimization algorithms and model a solution to a specific problem. This method provides a way to find solutions to problems that would be unlikely to be analytically feasible. The present work aims to use this method to optimize the consumption of fuel in Rendezvous maneuvers in interplanetary missions in a context where one wishes to send a probe to an asteroid to study it.