Update on ESAs Planetary Defence missions under study and in planning
- 1European Space Agency, Frascati, Italy (richard.moissl@esa.int)
- 2European Space Agency, ESOC, Germany
- 3European Space Agency, ESTEC, Netherlands
ESA is currently studying three Planetary Defence related missions in the framework of the Space Safety (S2P) Programme:
- NEOMIR (Near Earth Mission in the Infra Red): A space based IR telescope to be stationed at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point (L1), which will be scanning the inner solar system for Asteroids with solar elongations not readily accessible from groundbased observations.
- RAMSES (Rapid Apophis Mission for SEcurity and Safety): Rendezvous mission to asteroid (99942)Apophis (based on maximum re-use of components from the Hera spacecraft) with the objective to arrive at the NEO prior to its close encounter with Earth (ECA) on Friday 13th of April 2029 and to perform a full pre-ECA characterisation of the Object. This data will be highly valuable in combination with the data acquired by the NASA OSIRIS-APEx mission post-ECA.
- Satis: A lightweight Cubesat (12U-XL baseline) mission which is intended to demonstrate a low-cost asteroid inspection concept for Fast Asteroid Reconnaissance (FAR) of Near Earth Objects with a minimum payload configuration needed for the assessment of basic physical parameters necessary for Planetary Defence purposes.
In this presentation we will provide a programmatic update on these three mission studies and present plans for upcoming mission concepts.
How to cite: Moissl, R., Conversi, L., Cano, J.-L., Walker, R., Skrypnyk, I., and Martino, P.: Update on ESAs Planetary Defence missions under study and in planning, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-789, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-789, 2024.
