Asteroid targets of ongoing and future space missions

A review and a state of art of the asteroid targets of the ongoing and future space mission by ESA, NASA and ISAS will be presented. The importance of the asteroid science will be underlined, in particular to understand the origin and the evolution of our solar system. Hayabusa (MUSES-C) is Japan's asteroid sample return mission. The spacecraft, launched on may 2003, will arrive to the asteroid 25143 Itokawa on October 2005. Dawn, a NASA Discovery mission, will be launched on may 2006 and it foresee a long orbital exploration of the two most massive asteroids 4 Vesta (July 2010 - July 2011) and 1 Ceres (August 2014 - July 2015). The Rosetta mission (ESA Planetary Cornerstone) has a new scenario with launch expected on February 26, 2004, which includes one or two asteroid fly-bys (2009-2010) and a long orbital rendez-vous with the 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet nucleus (2014). The final selection of the asteroid target(s) depends on the Dv available after the Rosetta probe interplanetary orbit insertion manoeuvre. Only few meter/sec Dv are available for the asteroid science in the pre-launch resource budget; but there is the possibility to allocate to the asteroids some of the remnant Dv, now reserved as contingency for the insertion manoeuvre, as soon as the Rosetta probe will be on its way toward the comet. The ground-based observational effort in choosing the best and more primitive candidates will be presented as well as the baseline situation at the date of the COSPAR in Paris. A necessity of new mission to Near Earth Objects will also be presented as well as the studies developed and the possibility to have this type of mission within ESA or/and national agencies.