Constraining the Atira Orbital Class (IEO`s) Asteroid Population with the Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) Mission

Details Constraining the Atira Orbital Class (IEO`s) Asteroid Population with the Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) Mission Constraining the Atira Orbital Class (IEO`s) Asteroid Population with the Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) Mission

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.5207h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #52.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.493

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

The Atira orbital class of NEO's (by definition) always occurs inside Earth's orbit, and can only be found at relatively low solar elongations by ground-based searches. The latter surveys have succeeded in discovering 9 Atiras to date, but the discovery rate can be substantially augmented using a space-based telescope designed to image near the Sun. The NEOSSat microsatellite is designed to search the ecliptic plane at 45 to 55° solar elongation and ±40; degrees ecliptic latitude; near-Sun surveying is considerably compromised by zodiacal light brightness in visible wavelengths, but even lower elongations could be profitably searched. The spacecraft is a derivative of the Microvariablity and Oscillations of Stars (MOST) microsatellite weighing 65 kg with a 15 cm aperture f5.88 Maksutov telescope, and will be deployed in a Sun synchronous orbit. The spacecraft is a dual use mission and will also be used to image high Earth orbit artificial satellites. Under favourable circumstances the asteroid search project will cover 1200 square degrees of sky per month with limiting V magnitudes of 20. Planned survey cadence will be 4 images over 125 minutes; this cadence is tied to the NEOSSat orbital period of 100 minutes. A space-based telescope benefits from relatively low backgrounds, "continuous” and predictable availability, and the ability to use parallax to discriminate NEO's from the Main Belt population by determining distances to all NEO discoveries; a space-based sensor has the disadvantage of comparatively long slew times between fields. NEOSSat will be able to discover approximately one third of the Atira population >1; km in diameter in a 3 year survey (the spacecraft will detect Atiras to 18.5 H magnitude); 50% of the >1; km diameter Aten class population will be detected during the same interval.

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