Europe's Asteroid prang probe plan calls for cubesats

The European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to include cubesats in the design of its planned Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM).

Cubesats are 10cm³ modules that mostly use commercial-off-the-shelf electronics. Most don't include any propulsion, instead relying on being released into space to do their jobs. That approach makes the satellites light and cheap, two useful qualities if one wants to do a bit of speculative science alongside more formal efforts.

AIM's aim is to fly at the same time as the US Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The US mission will visit a pair of asteroids called Didymos and prang the smaller of the two as part of a save-the-planet proof-of-concept. AIM gets to watch and it's hoped that by building cubesats into the European craft it becomes possible to get more and different perspectives on the controlled crash.

The cubesat ideas being looked at include “taking a close-up look at the composition of the asteroid surface, measuring the gravity field, assessing the dust and ejecta plumes created during a collision, and landing a CubeSat for seismic monitoring.”

The ESA is now studying the cubesat proposals in depth and will become part of the detailed AIM mission design. That effort will be debated at the ESA’s Ministerial Council in December 2016, when a decision will be made on whether to fly AIM and its cubesat cargo at all. ®