Coupling High Fidelity Body Modeling with Non-Keplerian Dynamics to Design Aim-Mascot-2 Landing Trajectories on Didymos Binary Asteroid

The Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) includes among its primary objectives the release of a lander (MASCOT-2) on the surface of the smaller asteroid of binary couple 65803 Didymos. The work here presented is performed under ESA contract, in the frame of phase A mission design of AIM spacecraft. The paper focuses on the landing-related part of the design and presents the on-going work concerning the release strategy adopted to fulfill mission design requirements. The dynamics of the spacecraft are modeled using the most uptodate gravity model of Didymos system, based on shape models of the two asteroids. Descent trajectories are selected by exploiting manifold dynamics associated to the peculiar three-body environment in the proximity of Didymos.