Gravity Poppers: Hopping Probes for the Interior Mapping of Small Solar System Bodies

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Gravity Poppers: Hopping Probes for the Interior Mapping of Small Solar System Bodies

Hockman, Benjamin / Villa, Jacopo / French, Andrew / Chesley, Steven / Scheeres, Daniel J. / McMahon, Jay

This paper presents the results of NIAC Phase I study into the feasibility of a novel mission architecture for high-resolution gravity science on small Solar System bodies. The “Gravity Poppers” mission concept (see Fig. 1) consists of a swarm of small, minimalistic probes that are deployed from a mother spacecraft to the surface of a small body and which periodically and randomly hop around the surface. By tracking the ballistic sub-orbital trajectories of this hopping swarm, a very high resolution gravity field can be measured, which can then be used to answer a number of scientific questions of interest regarding the interior mass distribution of the body. This paper describes the three core focus areas of our study to demonstrate concept feasibility: (1) the design of hopping probes to be small, simple, robust, and “visible” to a distant spacecraft, (2) the tracking strategy for detecting and estimating the trajectories of a large number of ballistic probes, and (3) the algorithmic framework by which such measurements can be used to estimate the body's gravity field. Our results suggest the ability to estimate the gravity field of a 500 m asteroid beyond degree-and-order 40 through days to weeks of optical tracking of several LED-strobing probes, with a mass of only 200 g each. Collectively, this study demonstrates that the high-resolution gravity mapping of small body interiors is technically possible, economically feasible, and would enable a compelling set of science objectives aligned with NASA's goals in planetary science, planetary defense, and future interests in resource prospecting.

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Document information

Title :

Gravity Poppers: Hopping Probes for the Interior Mapping of Small Solar System Bodies

Contributors:

Hockman, Benjamin (author) / Villa, Jacopo (author) / French, Andrew (author) / Chesley, Steven (author) / Scheeres, Daniel J. (author) / McMahon, Jay (author)

Published in:

2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO) ; 1-26

Publication date :

2022-03-05

Size :

23667620 byte

ISBN :

978-1-6654-3760-8

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843618

Type of media :

Conference paper