Shen Ge

Design of Yarkovsky Effect Payload for Near Earth Asteroid Mitigation: Saving Earth from Asteroid Impact by Painting Asteroids Shen Ge

Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) pose as great of a threat as ever. This thesis looks into one innovative way of mitigating such threats through painting the surface of an asteroid such as Apophis using triboelectric dispensers, i.e. a space powder tube. Through the change of surface reflectivity from painting the surface white or black, the thermal distribution on the surface is thus changed which incurs a change in photon momentum radiation. This effectively creates a force which pushes the asteroid in a direction that alters its orbit to miss an Earth collision trajectory, i.e. altering the Yarkovsky effect. This thesis looks into the experiments and simulations necessary for constructing such a payload. The first mission implementing this design will be launched by 2020 to the NEA Apophis as the first test of this payload while a flight test in low earth orbit (LEO) will be conducted before then to confirm the operational status of the payload.