Asteroid Destinations Accessible for Human Exploration: A Preliminary Survey in Mid-2009

Theflexible path is one of several space exploration strategy options developed by theReview ofU.S.HumanSpace Flight Plans Committee in 2009. Among proposed flexible path destinations are near-Earth objects, those asteroids and comets having perihelions of less than 1.3 astronomical units and periods of less than 200 years. Heliocentricorbit element criteria have been developed with the objective of rapidly identifying the near-Earth object subset potentially accessible for human exploration capabilities. When these criteria were applied to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s small-body database in June 2009, the accessible subset was found to contain 36 near-Earth objects. Opportunities to visit these destinations have been obtained and assessed over the interval from 2020 through 2050. With the number of cataloged near-Earth objects expected to grow by more than an order of magnitude in the next 20 years, the number and frequency of human near-Earth object exploration opportunities will likewise increase.