Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme

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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 5: Planeten und kleine Körper I

EP 5.4: Talk

Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 14:45–15:00, V55.02

The Radio Science Experiment (RSE) onboard Marco Polo-R — •Thomas Andert¹, Martin Pätzold², Bernd Häusler¹, Silvia Tellmann², Stefan Remus³, and Roger Förstner¹ — ¹Institute of Space Technology & Space Applications, BW University , Munich, Germany — ²Rheinisches Institut für Umweltforschung (RIU), Department of Planetary Research at the University of Cologne, Germany — ³European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC), Madrid, Spain

Marco Polo is a candidate M-class mission for ESA's Cosmic Vision plan with a launch window between 2020 and 2024. It is a sample return mission to a primitive binary Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA). The baseline target is the C-Type binary NEA 1996FG3.

One primary science goal of Marco Polo-R is to determine the global physical properties of the NEA. A key parameter is the gravity field, which can be estimated with the Radio Science technique. When the radio path is well-clear of occulting material, the spacecraft can be treated as a classical test particle falling in the gravity field of the body system. The spacecraft motion causing the Doppler shift is in response to the variations in mass distribution within the NEA.

From the gravity field, especially from mass and low order gravity coefficients, the internal structure can be derived. The accuracy of the parameter depends on several factors like amplitude of the Doppler noise, instrumental noise, the precision of the orbit of the NEA.

The scientific objectives of the RSE onboard Marco Polo-R, the possible error contributing parameters and constraints on their precision in order to achieve small errors for the gravity field will be presented.