The Hera Radio Science Experiment at Didymos

Hera represents the European Space Agency's inaugural planetary defense space mission and plays a pivotal role in the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment international collaboration with NASA DART mission that performed the first asteroid deflection experiment using the kinetic impactor t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Gramigna, Edoardo, Riccardo Lasagni Manghi, Zannoni, Marco, Tortora, Paolo, Park, Ryan S, Tommei, Giacomo, Sébastien Le Maistre, Michel, Patrick, Castellini, Francesco, Kueppers, Michael
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 08.03.2024
Subjects
Asteroid collisions
Asteroid deflection
Cubesat
Intersatellite communications
Mass distribution
Parameters
Planetary defense
Rotational states
Space missions
Uncertainty
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Summary:Hera represents the European Space Agency's inaugural planetary defense space mission and plays a pivotal role in the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment international collaboration with NASA DART mission that performed the first asteroid deflection experiment using the kinetic impactor techniques. With the primary objective of conducting a detailed post-impact survey of the Didymos binary asteroid following the DART impact on its small moon called Dimorphos, Hera aims to comprehensively assess and characterize the feasibility of the kinetic impactor technique in asteroid deflection while conducting an in-depth investigation of the asteroid binary, including its physical and compositional properties as well as the effect of the impact on the surface and shape of Dimorphos. In this work, we describe the Hera radio science experiment, which will allow us to precisely estimate critical parameters, including the mass, which is required to determine the momentum enhancement resulting from the DART impact, mass distribution, rotational states, relative orbits, and dynamics of the asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos. Through a multi-arc covariance analysis, we present the achievable accuracy for these parameters, which consider the full expected asteroid phase and are based on ground radiometric, Hera optical images, and Hera to CubeSats InterSatellite Link radiometric measurements. The expected formal uncertainties for Didymos and Dimorphos GM are better than 0.01% and 0.1%, respectively, while their J2 formal uncertainties are better than 0.1% and 10%, respectively. [...]
ISSN:2331-8422