ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission: Mission Analysis and Payload Operations State of the Art

The Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) is an ESA mission whose goal is the exploration and study of binary asteroid 65803 Didymos. AIM is planned to be the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a binary asteroid: its mission objectives include the highly relevant scientific return of the exploration as well as innovative technological demonstrations. The paper presents some updates on the ongoing design of the mission. Each phase of the operative life of AIM spacecraft is detailed with information and results on the solutions adopted for Mission Analysis design and on the strategies to suitably operate payloads. The work presented in this paper has been performed by the authors under ESA contract within the phase A design of AIM mission.