The Asteroid Impact Mission: Consolidated Mission Analysis and Scientific Payload Operations at Binary Asteroid Didymos

The Asteroid Impact Mission is an ESA mission, part of a joint collaboration with NASA in the AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment) mission. The primary goal of AIDA is to assess the feasibility of deflecting the heliocentric path of a Near Earth Asteroid binary system, by impacting on the surface of the smaller asteroid of the couple. To this purpose, AIDA includes a kinetic impactor, DART by NASA and an observer, AIM by ESA. The consolidated mission analysis of AIM spacecraft is presented with a breakdown into the main mission phases. AIM is planned to be launched in late 2020 and to arrive at Didymos system in middle 2022. Suitable transfer solutions and launch window are presented; the approaching strategy to rendezvous with the binary system is discussed and close proximity operations at the asteroid are finally described. The results and analyses presented in the paper are currently performed by OHB System AG, Politecnico di Milano and Spin.Works under the European Space Agency study for phase A/B1 design of the AIM spacecraft. The project is currently ongoing and the mission analysis will be further iterated and refined through the design phase.