Engineering Commons^™

Gravitational Potential Modeling Of Near-Earth Contact Binaries, Stephanie Wood

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

A significant component of recent space exploration has been unmanned mission to comets

and asteroids. The increase in interest for these bodies necessitates an increase in demand

for higher fidelity trajectory simulations in order to assure mission success. Most available

methods for simulating trajectories about asymmetric bodies assume they are of uniform

density. This thesis examines a hybrid method that merges a mass concentration ("mascon")

model and a spherical harmonic model using the "Brillouin sphere" as the interface. This

joint model will be used for simulating trajectories about variable density bodies and, in

particular, contact binary asteroids and comets.

The …