CORDIS provides links to public deliverables and publications of HORIZON projects.
Links to deliverables and publications from FP7 projects, as well as links to some specific result types such as dataset and software, are dynamically retrieved from OpenAIRE .
Exploitable results
The project has the following main objectives:
- elaboration of the mission concepts;
- trajectory design;
- elaborating the detailed concept of the spacecraft;
- working out the scientific experiments and strawman payload.
Those goals which were planned for the second year of the study have been achieved. The following results of the research activities were obtained during the year:
The possibility of a comet encounter in the multiple asteroid flyby mission has been proven. However the encounter drastically reduces the number of the possible targets among the asteroids; as a result the asteroids to be encountered are less interesting from the scientific point of view.
Five mission options of most interest were selected. The options include asteroid 4 Vesta or 16 Psyche or 31 Euphrosyne as a primary target, total number of the asteroids to be encountered is 5-7.
Accurate optimisation and computation have been carried out for the selected options; this has given real characteristics of the spacecraft flight and proven reliability of the approximate results obtained for all other options.
Plots of the spacecraft trajectories and launch and flyby configurations were obtained for all mission options. Communication conditions during the transfers and encounters were analysed.
Uncertainties in the spacecraft and asteroids positions during the encounters were estimated. Required accuracy of the spacecraft position can be achieved using range or Doppler tracking data at long tracking interval; range, Doppler and VLBI data are necessary to provide the required accuracy at short tracking intervals. However the uncertainty of the asteroids positions is not satisfactory and autonomous navigation may be necessary for the close approach to the asteroids. Timing of the spacecraft tracking and asteroids observations was also determined.
Timing and costs of the required orbital correction manoeuvres were evaluated. 13 to 16 corrections of total value of about 200 m/s will be needed during the mission.
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