Speaker
Description
The flyby of Apophis in 2029 offers an opportunity to prove out rapid planetary defense mission concepts from Earth orbit. We will present a mission concept developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that achieves key planetary defense objectives of characterizing Apophis with two small satellites placed in flyby orbits from GTO. The spacecraft will be equipped with 25cm aperture optical telescopes capable of high resolution imagery during the Apophis flyby. These observations will deliver key information on the surface structure, rotation state, and changes that occur during tidal interactions with the Earth over the period where the tidal forces are largest. The data will be highly complementary to OSIRIS-Apex.
After the consecutive Apophis encounters, the spacecraft will be useful planetary defense assets at a time when the Vera Rubin Observatory and NEO Surveyor are detecting a large number of potentially hazardous asteroids for the first time. These asteroids will be submitted to the Minor Planet Center as all new discoveries are, but the faint magnitude limits of the Rubin Observatory and the complicated observing conditions from the ground for NEO Surveyor detections will pose challenges for following up new discoveries.
This paper offers an analysis of the performance of two 25 cm optical telescopes in the proposed orbits of our mission concept. These orbits are accessible by GTO rideshare to flyby Apophis. Residual fuel will allow for maneuvers to regularize the orbits and prepare for a dedicated residual mission of NEO tracking for orbit refinement and characterization. The two satellites will allow for simultaneous binocular observations with a long baseline. This will enable rapid orbit refinement and characterization with broad-band photometry in the visible band.