Quantifying hazards: asteroid disruption in lunar distant retrograde orbits

Abstract

The Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) proposes to retrieve a near-Earth asteroid and position it in a lunar distant retrograde orbit (DRO) for later study, crewed exploration, and ultimately resource exploitation. During the Caltech Space Challenge, a recent workshop to design a crewed mission to a captured asteroid in a DRO, it became apparent that the asteroid's low escape velocity (<1 cm s$^{-1}$) would permit the escape of asteroid particles during any meaningful interaction with astronauts or robotic probes. This Note finds that up to 5% of escaped asteroid fragments will cross Earth-geosynchronous orbits and estimates the risk to satellites from particle escapes or complete disruption of a loosely bound rubble pile.