The goal of many space missions to small bodies, such as the Hayabusa mission to Itokawa and the forthcoming OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid 1999 RQ36, are to take samples from the surface of the body. The prospect of designing a transfer to an asteroid surface and choosing where on the surface to sample begs several questions related to the flow of material across an asteroid surface, possible regions of stable resting points, and the surface forces and slopes that a landing spacecraft will encounter. The detailed design of surface encounters rests heavily on the capabilities and design of the proposed spacecraft. A series of interesting case studies for the Hayabusa spacecraft and its successful touchdowns on the asteroid Itokawa surface were summarized in [81, 201, 64, 84]. In the following we take a more dynamics and mechanics oriented approach and describe the surface environment due to gravitational and rotational effects, describe measures of surface stability, and discuss some simple characterizations of the ballistics of bodies from the surface of an asteroid. This chapter does not probe the interesting question of how surface rovers should be designed and operated in order to achieve specific goals (see [85]).


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    Title :

    The Surface Environment on Asteroids


    Additional title:

    Springer Praxis Books (formerly: Springer-Praxis Series)


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2012-03-20


    Size :

    12 pages





    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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