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Idea Multi Asteroid Touring

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Alex Kmoch edited this page Oct 19, 2018 · 8 revisions

Multi-Asteroid Touring

Main mentor: Andris Slavinskis

Related NASA Challenge: Hello, Bennu

The motivations to study asteroids range from understanding of the early evolution of the Solar System to plans of in-space resource utilization. As remnants from Solar System formation, they are studied to understand the delivery of water and organics to the Earth and other planets, and to determine the evolution and composition of the asteroids themselves, of the planets, and the Solar System as a whole. As the largest population of Solar System objects, asteroids and meteoroids regularly impact the Earth and its atmosphere, causing meteor showers, scientifically valuable meteorite impacts and devastating asteroid impacts. As rich and accessible resources, asteroids could be used for extraction of water and for mining of platinum group metals and building materials.

There are two principal ways the asteroids are studied. First, via distant, typically point-source observations with ground-based and space telescopes. Second, via space missions with close-range observation, in situ measurements and sample return. The first method allows the study of thousands of objects using a single instrument at a time. By doing so, we gain overall knowledge about orbits, albedos, colours, spectra and sizes of asteroids. On the other hand, a single spacecraft can study one or, in some cases, a few objects in detail. Space missions can provide maps of albedos, colours, spectra and morphological features (craters, faults, fractures, boulders, etc.), three-dimensional models, precise mass and density estimates, physical properties and chemical composition of the surface material, as well as infer the internal composition.

The pinnacle of asteroid science is sample return missions. This is evident with the past mission Hayabusa to Itokawa, Hayabusa2 which is currently at Ryugu and OSIRIS-Rex which is in development and will land on Bennu. In addition, DART mission is being developed to impact Didymos’ moon. Planning such missions is extremely difficult because very little is known about landing and sampling sites.

We have made a preliminary study of Multi-Asteroid Touring PDF mission which would flyby hundreds of asteroids using tens of nanospacecraft equipped with electric solar wind sails. While flybys provide simple measurements of spectral imaging, the mission’s strength is in numbers – provide close-range images of an order of magnitude more asteroids of various spectral types and sizes and in various families. One of the objectives is to map potential sample return targets and characterize potential sampling sites on asteroids.

Your challenge is to study how data from multi-asteroid touring would help to plan future asteroid missions.

Data:

Both are made by Mihkel Pajusalu.

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