Don Quijote - Can we protect ourselves from the inbound NEO?
- Paper number
IAC-06-B1.P.1.14
- Author
Mr. Richard Blott, Qinetiq Ltd., United Kingdom
- Year
2006
- Abstract
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Don Quijote (DQ) mission is a ‘pre-mitigation’ concept designed to develop technologies and methods for the deflection of Earth crossing asteroids posing a potential danger to the Earth. In this paper, QinetiQ will present its mission concept which is currently under development in an ESA Phase A study. The DQ mission has two major parts: an Orbiter spacecraft to study the asteroid, and an Impactor spacecraft which will hit the asteroid at high speed (~10km/s) in order impart a deflection. A major feature of our solution will be the re-use of existing flight proven hardware wherever possible to reduce costs and to de-risk the programme. The Orbiter spacecraft design will feature flight-proven SMART-1 spacecraft heritage, and will utilise solar electric propulsion to reach, rendezvous with and maintain an orbit around the target body. The Orbiter will be used to refine the orbit of the asteroid prior to impact and after impact will be used to assess the deflection achieved. In addition its payload suite will be designed to optimally observe the asteroid, and also to monitor the impact event, and relay imagery of the event to Earth. The Impactor spacecraft will utilise chemical propulsion, and will exploit maximum re-use of flight proven subsystems from several European small spacecraft platforms such as SMART and Proba. QinetiQ will draw on its extensive terrestrial research and development expertise into the novel, optical-tracking techniques required to successfully guide the high velocity Impactor spacecraft onto the target Near Earth Object (NEO). The Impactor and Orbiter will be designed with separate procurement routes in mind. The spacecraft will be launched separately, and low cost options for launchers and upper stage delivery systems will be selected. A ground segment solution featuring high levels of autonomy will be developed based on recent ESA mission heritage, including the ground segment for SMART-1. Our consortium is led by QinetiQ, and the partners include our subsidiary Verhaert Space, the Swedish Space Corporation, The Open University, and SciSys Limited. In addition to the role of mission Prime, QinetiQ will bring its world-class solar electric propulsion (SEP) expertise to the Orbiter solution, and will also bring the experience gained in the SIMONE asteroid rendezvous mission study.
- Abstract document