Near-Earth asteroid flyby survey mission using solar sailing technology

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility of on asteroid (NEA) survey mission enabled by advanced solar sailing technology. The study is focused not on the solar sail spacecraft itself but on its orbital dynamics to realize the missions. A novel NEA flyby survey mission with a lightweight solar sail spacecraft to increase the accessibility to NEA flybys located in the vicinity of the Earth's orbit is proposed. A numerical study suggests that our approach increases the opportunities in proximity to NEAs, which have eccentric and inclined orbits.