NH041-05
LICIACube: the Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids
Wednesday, 16 December 2020: 18:00
Virtual
Elisabetta Dotto1, Vincenzo Della Corte2, Marilena Amoroso3, Ivano Bertini4, John Robert Brucato5, Andrea Capannolo6, Biagio Cotugno7, Gabriele Cremonese8, Valerio Di Tana7, Igor Gai9, Simone Ieva10, Gabriele Impresario11, Stavro Ivanovski12, Michelle Lavagna6, Alice Lucchetti13, Elena Mazzotta Epifani14, Andrea Meneghin15, Federico Miglioretti7, Dario Modenini9, Maurizio Pajola16, Pasquale Palumbo17, Davide Perna18, Simone Pirrotta11, Giovanni Poggiali5, Alessandro Rossi19, Emanuele Simioni20, Simone Simonetti7, Paolo Tortora21, Marco Zannoni21, Giovanni Zannotti6, Angelo Zinzi11, Andrew F. Cheng22, Andrew Rivkin23, Elena Y Adams23, Edward Reynolds22 and Kristin Fretz24, (1)INAF Observatory of Rome, Rome, Italy, (2)IAPS-INAF, Rome, Italy, (3)Italian Space Agency, Rome, Italy, (4)CISAS - Center for Studies and Activities for Space, University of Padova, Padova, Italy, (5)INAF National Institute for Astrophysics, Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Firenze, Italy, (6)Politecnico di Milano - Bovisa Campus, Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Aerospaziali, Milano, Italy, (7)Argotec, Torino, Italy, (8)INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Padova, Italy, (9)Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy, (10)INAF National Institute for Astrophysics, Rome, Italy, (11)ASI, Roma, Italy, (12)INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, Astronomical Observatory of Trieste, Trieste, Italy, (13)Universita' di Padova, CISAS, Padova, Italy, (14)INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Roma, Italy, (15)INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Firenze, Italy, Arcetri, Italy, (16)INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Padova, Italy, (17)Parthenope University of Naples, Scienze e Tecnologie, Naples, Italy, (18)INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Roma, Italy, (19)CNR Istituto di Fisica Applicata “Nello Carrara”, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy, (20)INAF-OAPD, Padova, Italy, (21)University of Bologna, Department of Industrial Engineering, Bologna, Italy, (22)Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, United States, (23)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (24)JHU/APL, Baltimore, MD, United States
Abstract:
“LICIACube – the Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids” [1] is a 6U cubesat, managed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and realized by the aerospace company Argotec, that will be part of the NASA DART mission [2]. DART will be launched in mid 2021 and in autumn 2022 will impact on Dimorphos, the secondary member of the (65803) Didymos binary asteroid system. LICIACube will be hosted as piggyback during the 15 months of interplanetary cruise, released ten days before the DART impact and autonomously guided along its fly-by trajectory to the target, with a Close Approach passage at ~55 km few minutes after the DART impact. LICIACube will be the first deep space spacecraft autonomously managed by an Italian team.
Several unique images of the surface of the target and the effects of the DART impact on the asteroid will be collected and transmitted to Earth; the Ground Segment, with data archiving and processing will be managed by the ASI Space Science Data Center.
The scientific objectives of LICIACube are:
- to testify and characterize the impact;
- to image and study the ejecta plume in order to:
- allow measurement of the motion of the slow ejecta;
- allow estimation of the structure of the plume, measuring the evolution of the dust distribution;
- to image and study the impact site in order to investigate the surface morphology and composition;
- to image and study the non-impact hemisphere in order to investigate the surface morphology and composition and to increase the accuracy of the shape and volume determination.
The whole project and its present status-of-the-art will be presented and discussed together with the in situ observing strategy and the expected performances.
Acknowledgements: The LICIACube team acknowledges financial support from Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI, contract No. 2019-31-HH.0 CUP F84I190012600).
References
[1] Dotto, E., et al.: LICIACube - the Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids: in support of the NASA DART mission towards asteroid (65803) Didymos, Plan. Space Sci., 2020, submitted.
[2] Cheng, A. F., at al.: AIDA DART asteroid deflection test: Planetary defense and science objectives, Plan. Space Sci., Vol. 157, pp. 104-115, 2018.
