LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids) [1] is a 6U CubeSat platform managed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) that was launched, on November 2021, with the NASA mission DART [2] toward the binary asteroid Didymos. After 10 months of flight, at the end of September 2022, DART will impact Dimorphos, the smallest of the two asteroids of the binary system, to perform the first test of the kinetic impactor technique conceived to deflect an asteroid eventually en route to Earth. Ten days before the impact, LICIACube will be released and guided to perform an autonomous fly-by of Dimorphos, with the aims: i) to document the DART impact's effects, ii) to characterize the shape of the target, and iii) to perform dedicated scientific investigations on it. LICIACube has been developed by the Italian aerospace company Argotec and is equipped with two optical cameras (with narrow and wide FoV, respectively): the primary instrument, named LEIA (Liciacube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid), is a catadioptric camera equipped with a Panchromatic filter centered at 650nm±250nm; the secondary instrument, named LUKE (Liciacube Unit Key Explorer), is the Gecko imager from SCS space, equipped with a RGB Bayer pattern filter. Images acquired by LEIA and LUKE will allow us to constrain the shape and volume of Dimorphos as well as its physical properties. High-resolution images, obtained by LEIA at the closest approach (at about 55 km), will allow us to study the surface morphology of Dimorphos and the presence of boulders/large blocks on its surface. The LUKE data will give us also the opportunity to investigate the composition of Dimorphos throughout spectrophotometric analyses. It will then be possible to map the surface composition of the object and to derive the surface heterogeneity at the observed scale. The LEIA and LUKE images of the ejecta plume produced by the impact, compared with numerical models of dust dynamics, will allow us to have measurements of the motion of the slow ejecta and to estimate the structure of the plume itself. During the LICIACube fly-by we will perform also a radio science experiment, exploiting the information carried by radio link between the S/C and the Earth focused on the precise orbit determination, and providing an assessment of the accuracies achievable in the estimation of the scientific parameters of interest, like the masses and the extended gravity field of Didymos. After the Dimorphos fly-by, LICIACube will download the obtained images directly to Earth: the LICIACube Ground Segment has a complex architecture based on the Argotec Mission Control Centre, antennas of the NASA Deep Space Network and data archiving and processing, managed at the ASI Space Science Data Center.
LICIACube: the Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids traveling to Dimorphos with DART
Bertini, Ivano;Palumbo, Pasquale;
2022-01-01
Abstract
LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids) [1] is a 6U CubeSat platform managed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) that was launched, on November 2021, with the NASA mission DART [2] toward the binary asteroid Didymos. After 10 months of flight, at the end of September 2022, DART will impact Dimorphos, the smallest of the two asteroids of the binary system, to perform the first test of the kinetic impactor technique conceived to deflect an asteroid eventually en route to Earth. Ten days before the impact, LICIACube will be released and guided to perform an autonomous fly-by of Dimorphos, with the aims: i) to document the DART impact's effects, ii) to characterize the shape of the target, and iii) to perform dedicated scientific investigations on it. LICIACube has been developed by the Italian aerospace company Argotec and is equipped with two optical cameras (with narrow and wide FoV, respectively): the primary instrument, named LEIA (Liciacube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid), is a catadioptric camera equipped with a Panchromatic filter centered at 650nm±250nm; the secondary instrument, named LUKE (Liciacube Unit Key Explorer), is the Gecko imager from SCS space, equipped with a RGB Bayer pattern filter. Images acquired by LEIA and LUKE will allow us to constrain the shape and volume of Dimorphos as well as its physical properties. High-resolution images, obtained by LEIA at the closest approach (at about 55 km), will allow us to study the surface morphology of Dimorphos and the presence of boulders/large blocks on its surface. The LUKE data will give us also the opportunity to investigate the composition of Dimorphos throughout spectrophotometric analyses. It will then be possible to map the surface composition of the object and to derive the surface heterogeneity at the observed scale. The LEIA and LUKE images of the ejecta plume produced by the impact, compared with numerical models of dust dynamics, will allow us to have measurements of the motion of the slow ejecta and to estimate the structure of the plume itself. During the LICIACube fly-by we will perform also a radio science experiment, exploiting the information carried by radio link between the S/C and the Earth focused on the precise orbit determination, and providing an assessment of the accuracies achievable in the estimation of the scientific parameters of interest, like the masses and the extended gravity field of Didymos. After the Dimorphos fly-by, LICIACube will download the obtained images directly to Earth: the LICIACube Ground Segment has a complex architecture based on the Argotec Mission Control Centre, antennas of the NASA Deep Space Network and data archiving and processing, managed at the ASI Space Science Data Center.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
