Keywords: Apophis, OSIRIS-APEX
The OSIRIS-APEX mission will repurpose the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to study Apophis, rendezvousing shortly after the asteroid’s close approach to Earth on 13 April 2029 [1-3]. The mission will produce and release many data products. We highlight here some that will be of particular interest to the planetary defense community.
- Shape model: We expect to...
Keywords: Dimorphos, Apophis, HERA, RAMSES
CNES contributes to the most essential Planetary Missions of this decade, aimed to the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, and to the asteroid (99942) Apophis. We start with the Hera mission launched by ESA on October 7th 2024. Its target, Dimorphos, the 151 meters moon of Didymos, was successfully impacted by NASA's DART proe on September 26th 2022....
The OSIRIS-APEX (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Apophis Explorer) mission will approach and rendezvous with asteroid (99942) Apophis in the spring of 2029, just after its close approach to Earth (DellaGiustina et al., 2023). APEX has three primary mission goals. The first is to study the processes that drive the evolution of small asteroids, including...
Satis is an ESA planetary defence mission study. The mission consists of a stand-alone 12U-XL CubeSat that aims to rendezvous with a Near-Earth Object (NEO). Satis serves as pioneer to demonstrate a completely new class of small, fast-response missions for planetary defense. Here, we present the Satis mission and its science and planetary defence objectives.
The main objectives of the...
The thermal infrared imager TIRI was developed for the ESA Hera mission, which was launched on 7 October 2024 by the SpaceX Falcon9 launch vehicle from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Hera will rendezvous with the S-type near-Earth asteroid binary 65803 Didymos and its moon Dimorphos in December 2026, and perform a six-month-long observations there for the purposes of planetary defense...