AIM mission navigation camera testing

A practical test being performed during the 2015 ESTEC Open Day of the navigation camera planned to guide ESA’s proposed Asteroid Impact Mission around its double-asteroid target.

Many of the thousands of visitors to ESA’s technical heart in Noordwijk, the Netherlands on Sunday 4 October were able to see the simulation for themselves, set up by the Agency’s Guidance, Navigation and Control section.

The red robotic arm seen left held the camera and moved it smoothly through three dimensions next to a spinning model of the Didymos asteroid system, destination of the Agency’s candidate Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM).

The experiment was performed in partnership with ESA’s Automation and Robotics section, supplying the COMAU robotic arm.

The screen in the foreground depicted the camera’s eye view as it gradually came closer to the main asteroid.AIM is a candidate mission of opportunity currently undergoing preliminary design work, set to be presented to ESA’s Council of Ministers in November 2016 for approval.

With a planned launch window opening in October 2020, AIM would be humanity’s first mission to a binary asteroid system, putting down a lander on the smaller asteroid of the pair and providing detailed before-and-after mapping as part of the larger Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment mission.