An interstellar asteroid, 1I/’Oumuamua, was discovered on a highly hyperbolic orbit by Robert Weryk on October 19, 2017 moving with a speed of 26.32 km/s. It appears to come from the direction of the star Vega in the constellation Lyra. It would be really great to send a mission to rendezvous and fly in formation with 1I/’Oumuamua to study the asteroid. The high velocity makes it hard to do with current technology.
Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) might provide a answer. We designed a spacecraft with a 1 MW DFD power plant and assumed a launch on March 16, 2030. The following plots show the trajectory and the force, mass and power of the spacecraft during the 23 year mission. As you can see we don’t have to use the full 1 MW for propulsion so we have plenty of power for data transmission and the science payload.
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The code for this analysis will be available in Release 2018.1 of the Princeton Satellite Systems Spacecraft Control Toolbox for MATLAB.
Is Dawn in a position to Rendezvous with Oumuamua?
Dawn is currently in orbit around Ceres. It does not have the velocity change capability to rendezvous with 1I/‘Oumuamua.
I knew that Dawn is in orbit around Ceres, after being in orbit around Vesta for a year or so. I don’t know the limitations of its ion drive engine, or where Ceres is relative to 1I/’Oumuamua right now. I figured my question was a long shot. Thanks for answering.