Adam Hibberd
A mission to Near Earth Asteroid designated 2024 YR4 which for a while had a relatively high chance of colliding with the Earth.
This probability has dropped to zero but instead the likelihood of impact with the Moon has gone up – it is now ~ 4 %.
Such a collision would cause debris to fly all over the place and any astronauts – or taikonauts for that matter – on the Moon at the time would have to take evasive measures. Furthermore it would hurl debris into cis-lunar space, and might possibly knock out some Earth satellites, leading to onset of the ‘Kessler Syndrome’.
This animation assumes that the asteroid actually misses the Moon with an associated likelihood of ~ 96 %.
So would a sample return mission be feasible for this object?
It turns out yes, assuming 2 Deep Space Manoeuvres (DSMs) on the way and a launch Characteristic Energy (C3) of ~ 81 km2s-2.
This launch C3 would enable the Falcon Heavy Expendable to loft an OSIRIS-REx mass spacecraft to the necessary interplanetary orbit, this being a previous sample return mission to the asteroid ‘Bennu’.
This was all solved and generated by my ‘Optimum Interplanetary Trajectory Software’ (OITS).
The link can be found here: