NEOMIR: a space based infrared mission for NEO detection, characterization and early warning
- 1Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Research, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain (jlicandr@iac.es)
- 2European Space Agency – ESRIN (Via Galileo Galilei, 00044 Frascati (RM), Italy)
- 3ESA PDO NEO Coordination Centre (Via Galileo Galilei, 00044 Frascati (RM), Italy)
- 4CNRS-Lagrange, Observatoire de la Cote d’Azur (Bv. de l’Observatoire, 06304 Nice, France)
- 5School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, UK
- 6Astrophysics Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)
- 7Department of Physics (P.O. Box 64, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland)
- 8MPE (Giessenbachstrasse, 85748 Garching, Germany)
- 9Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy (5 Cuțitul de Argint, 040557 Bucharest, Romania)
- 10University of Craiova, Str. A. I. Cuza nr. 13, 200585 Craiova, Romania.
Most current and planned near-Earth objects (NEO) surveys are made with ground-based telescopes and carried out in the visible wavelength range. However, this approach has some limitations, such as (1) weather dependency, (2) only a portion of the night sky is visible from any given location on Earth, (3) NEOs are difficult to detect at low galactic latitudes and (4) visible-light surveys can only determine the motion and apparent magnitude of an object, but its physical properties (such as size) can only be inferred indirectly and therefore require additional observations for characterisation.
The European Space Agency (ESA) is studying a NEO Mission in the Infra-Red (NEOMIR) in the framework of its Space Safety Program (S2P). NEOMIR is a space-based mission working in the thermal infrared and placed at the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L1), aimed of detecting and characterising new NEOs and – in particular -- focusing on the cases of imminent impactors. NEOMIR can thus serve as an early NEO impact warning system. NEOMIR is designed to overcome most of the ground-based issues discussed before, by regularly scanning an area not easily accessible from ground or other space-based NEO surveys and using modern detection techniques optimized to detect fast moving objects. NEOMIR is designed to discover the smaller NEO population, which could only be observed from ground-based surveys when close to Earth
A preliminary study of NEOMIR was performed in 2022. In this initial phase-0, various mission scenarios have been analysed by ESA’s Concurrent Design Facility (CDF). The outcome consisted of a mission scenario that has been further investigated via two industrial contract(s) during 2023. Also, in 2023, ESA established a Science Advisory Group (SAG), comprising a team of experts from multiple European institutions and coordinated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). The purpose of this group is to offer scientific consultancy to the phase-0 industrial studies.
In this work, we will present the mission requirements and spacecraft design based on the industrial studies and SAG advice, the status of the project as well as initial results on the expected detection capabilities.
How to cite: Licandro, J., Conversi, L., Delbo, M., Fitzsimmons, A., Muinonen, K., Mueller, T., and Popescu, M.: NEOMIR: a space based infrared mission for NEO detection, characterization and early warning, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-882, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-882, 2024.
