The European Asteroid Impact Mission: Phase A Design And Mission Analysis (original) (raw)
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The Asteroid Impact Mission is an ESA mission, part of a joint collaboration with NASA in the AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment) mission. The primary goal of AIDA is to assess the feasibility of deflecting the heliocentric path of a Near Earth Asteroid binary system, by impacting on the surface of the smaller asteroid of the couple. To this purpose, AIDA includes a kinetic impactor, DART by NASA and an observer, AIM by ESA. The consolidated mission analysis of AIM spacecraft is presented with a breakdown into the main mission phases. AIM is planned to be launched in late 2020 and to arrive at Didymos system in middle 2022. Suitable transfer solutions and launch window are presented; the approaching strategy to rendezvous with the binary system is discussed and close proximity operations at the asteroid are finally described. The results and analyses presented in the paper are currently performed by OHB System AG, Politecnico di Milano and Spin.Works under the European Space Agency study for phase A/B1 design of the AIM spacecraft. The project is currently ongoing and the mission analysis will be further iterated and refined through the design phase.
ESA's Asteroid Impact Mission: Mission Analysis and Payload Operations state of the art
The Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is an ESA mission whose goal is the exploration and study of binary asteroid 65803 Didymos. AIM is planned to be the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a binary asteroid: its mission objectives include the highly relevant scientific return of the exploration as well as innovative technological demonstrations. The paper presents some updates on the ongoing design of the mission. Each phase of the operative life of AIM spacecraft is detailed with information and results on the solutions adopted for Mission Analysis design and on the strategies to suitably operate payloads. The work presented in this paper has been performed by the authors under ESA contract within the phase A design of AIM mission.
To prevent from future Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHA), one of the most relevant techniques to be proved and tested is the deflection of the heliocentric path of the asteroid. Despite many theoretical studies on asteroid deflections are present in literature, this kind of solution has never been tested in a relevant environment before. ESA's Asteroid Impact Monitoring (AIM) mission is a joint mission with NASA's DART mission (AIM+DART=AIDA mission). AIDA represents the first space mission aimed to assessing the possibility of deflecting the heliocentric orbital path of an asteroid [1], [3]. The target of the study is the binary Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) (65803) Didymos, which will transit close to the Earth (less than 0.7 AU) in late 2022. Didymos is a binary asteroid system composed by a primary asteroid of 800 m diameter and a smaller asteroid of about 170 m diameter [2], [4], [5]. The goal of AIM mission is to characterize the binary couple before and after the orbital deflection of the asteroid system. The heliocentric deflection is obtained by means of a high velocity (about 6 km/s) kinetic impact, performed by DART spacecraft. The paper presents the preliminary study for the mission analysis of AIM spacecraft. The study covers all main phases of the mission, from the selection of the launch window and the design of the interplanetary transfer, to close proximity operations at the binary system. Innovative solutions are presented to lower Δv budget during close proximity operations, by exploiting the gravity of the smaller asteroid. The binary system is modeled as a Three-Body system, to better exploit its peculiar dynamic environment and better design the mission [6]. Even if the paper content focuses on the AIM mission scenario, the presented approach can be easily generalized to assess the feasibility and costs in terms of Δv budget and time constraints of a mission to a NEA.
Close-Proximity Operations Concept of the Asteroid Impact Mission
The Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission is an international collaboration of ESA and NASA, with the primary goals to test the ability to perform a spacecraft impact on a near-Earth asteroid and to measure and characterize the deflection caused by the impact. The ESA-led Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is to be designed on a low-cost approach and to be launched in 2020. Its primary objective is to characterise the binary asteroid system 65803 Didymos (1996 GT) and then to assess the consequences of an impact from a NASA provided spacecraft named DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) on the secondary. Prior to the arrival of DART, AIM is planned to rendezvous with the asteroid system in mid-2022. On arrival, AIM would conduct observations that can be used to complement and prepare for the DART impact and perform technology demonstration. In addition, it is planned to release a number of CubeSat opportunity-payload and place the MASCOT-2 lander on the surface of the secondary asteroid. Further, a demonstration of deep space optical communications is planned. AIM is currently studied in the scope of a Phase B1 under ESA contract by two consortia, one of those being led by OHB System. This paper presents OHB " s current mission and asteroid operations strategy, addressing mission design and operational challenges. The tight schedule (launch in 2020) and the low cost approach for spacecraft design and operations are challenging, especially in context of the high complexity and performance requirements connected to deep space mission operations and navigation. Special focus is therefore placed on asteroid local operations, the planned payload operations, the deployment of MASCOT-2 to the surface of the secondary asteroid in the binary system, the navigation strategy of AIM, and how OHB plans to overcome the challenges posed by this unique mission scenario.