The COmet Nucleus TOUR (CONTOUR) Mission
Abstract
At the time of submission of this abstract, the COmet Nucleus TOUR (CONTOUR) spacecraft is at NASA's Kennedy Space Center awaiting transfer to the launch pad for launch aboard a Delta-2425 rocket on or after 1 July 2002. This Discovery-class mission has a goal to study the diversity of cometary nuclei. The launch will be into a high-apogee Earth orbit in preparation for firing a STAR-30 Solid Rocket Motor on 15 August 2002. At that point, the spacecraft will be on a trajectory for a flyby of comet 2P/Encke on 12 November 2003. In this talk, we discuss the instrument payload, the science goals and the progress of the spacecraft to date. The nominal mission includes flybys of at least two comets with closest approach to Encke of 130 km. The spacecraft uses repeated Earth flybys to realign the trajectory for targeting additional comets. This adds flexibility to the mission which allows for changing targets and for additional targets. Thus, if a bright new comet were discovered, the CONTOUR spacecraft could be targeted for a flyby of this new comet. In addition, a unique feature of the CONTOUR spacecraft is that it will be placed into a "hibernation" mode between Earth and comet flybys. This allows for lower mission operation costs while not endangering the spacecraft functionality.
- Publication:
-
34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002cosp...34E2739C