Kinetic impactor for a short warning asteroid deflection

Abstract

In this paper, GMV as a major AOCS (Attitude Orbit Control System)/GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control) system provider presents its work on the development of a GNC system for a Kinetic Impact mission. Asteroid impacts on Earth are a known source of extinction and played an important role in the evolution of life on Earth. This comes as no surprise given the high number of objects orbiting in Earth’s vicinity—asteroid impacts become a question of “when” rather than “if”.This comes as no surprise given the high number of objects orbiting in Earth’s vicinity—asteroid impacts become a question of “when” rather than “if”. Under this motivation, thousands of potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) are monitored around the globe and naturally the question on the next step rose: What can we do when an incoming asteroid is identified as being on collision course with Earth? This is the motivation behind the field of Planetary Defence. Several mitigation strategies are being studied, but most of these have technology readiness levels still far off from the required. The one that comes closest is the kinetic impactor concept, which is the focus of this work. The concept is simple from a theoretical standpoint - a spacecraft (impactor) is sent into a collision course against the hazard NEO transferring enough momentum through kinetic energy to slightly change the NEO’s trajectory and causes it to miss the Earth.The main component of kinetic impactors is the GNC, due to the necessity of a fully autonomous system. The major elements are the camera and the guidance, since they will allow detecting the target and modifying its trajectory to have a successful impact, respectively. This study includes the implementation of the required algorithms as well as an analysis of their performance in the impact scenario.The main variables that control the simulations have been examined in order to determine the design limits. The sensitivity analysis illustrates that the errors introduced in the model were chosen conservatively, inasmuch as the impact could be reached introducing higher uncertainties and errors in the systems considered. In general, even with the not excessively complex algorithms employed, the performance of the GNC is good. This study opens the door for the development of a kinetic impactor mission.