Exploring near Earth object’s activity with cubesats: low surface brightness
Abstract
Ever smaller Near Earth Objects (NEOs) continue to be discovered, with most potentially hazardous ones already surveyed and ongoing plans for space missions to deflect and mine them in the near future. These transitional objects in relatively unstable orbits have recently experienced collisional or dynamical encounters that have sent them to Earth’s vicinity. Finding comet-like activity (sublimation and ejected dust) is necessary to understand their origin, recent history, and evolution. Mommert et al (2014) have recently discovered cometary activity on the third largest NEO (3552) Don Quixote using near-Infrared imaging from Spitzer/IRAC they detect both a coma and tail as extended emission they identify as CO2 ice sublimation. This activity has gone unnoticed due to either sporadic activity or the relatively low surface brightness in optical wavelengths of light reflecting off dust, 26 mag/arcsec2 which necessarily imposes an extreme bias against detection. We propose to find this activity directly in the optical by going above the atmosphere.We are developing a 6U Cubesat to carry a 20cm aperture telescope. The volume restrictions impose a deployment system design for the telescope. We will study the optimal mission and optical setup for our goals, including the feasibility of a novel coronagraph to increase the sensitivity. Detecting NEO activity requires stability and low instrumental noise over many hours. Atmosphere’s varying point spread function (PSF), coupled with the extended PSF of reflective telescopes, lead us to propose to develop the concept and technology to manage a refractive telescope in space with the potential inclusion of a coronagraph, optimized for detecting faint features near bright targets. The experiment considers targeting nearby NEOs and optimizing observations for low surface brightness.
- Publication:
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AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #47
- Pub Date:
- November 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015DPS....4731212F