Asteroid Rendezvous Launch Window Tool

This project computes the optimal launch date from Earth to a target asteroid using classical orbital elements and a Lambert transfer.
It is fully interactive — the user enters asteroid elements, mission dates, and flight time, and the script computes the Δv curve and best solution.

This version is compatible with poliastro 0.7.0, which is used automatically on macOS ARM + Python 3.13.

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Features

• Build asteroid orbit from user-entered classical elements
• Earth ephemeris from poliastro
• Propagate asteroid to arrival date
• Solve Lambert transfers for multiple departure dates
• Compute:
  • Δv at departure
  • Δv at arrival
  • total Δv
• Scan a launch window
• Plot Δv vs departure date
• Print the optimal launch date and arrival date

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Example Inputs (used during development)

Asteroid orbital elements

a = 1.8 AU e = 0.2 i = 10 deg RAAN Ω = 80 deg ω = 30 deg M = 150 deg Epoch = 2025-01-01 00:00

Mission parameters

Launch window start: 2026-01-01 00:00 Launch window end: 2026-12-31 00:00 Time of flight: 200 days Number of samples: 30 departure dates

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Example Output

Best departure: 2026-08-27 11:35 TDB Arrival: 2027-03-15 11:35 TDB Minimum Δv: 37.174 km/s

A Δv vs departure-date plot is also generated.

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How to Run

1. Create a virtual environment

python3 -m venv .venv source .venv/bin/activate

2. Install required packages

python -m pip install numpy matplotlib astropy poliastro

(Your system will automatically install poliastro 0.7.0, which matches the script.)

3. Run the program

(python asteroid_launch_window.py)

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📁 Project Structure

asteroid_window/ │ ├── asteroid_launch_window.py # main tool └── README.md # this file