The European component of the joint ESA-NASA Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission has been redesigned from the original version called Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM), and is now called Hera. The main objectives of AIDA are twofold: (1) to perform an asteroid deflection test by means of a kinetic impactor under detailed study at NASA (called DART, for Double Asteroid Redirection Test); and (2) to investigate with Hera the changes in geophysical and dynamical properties of the target binary asteroid after the DART impact. This joint mission will allow extrapolating the results of the kinetic impact to other asteroids and therefore fully
Operation of a small CubeSat in the deep-space microgravity environment brings additional challenging factors including the increased radiation environment, the significant contribution of non-gravitational forces to the satellite orbit, or the limited communication opportunities. These factors need to be taken into account in the form of modifications to the classic CubeSat architecture. Increased radiation resistance, the semi-autonomous satellite operation, navigation, and the active orbit correction are required. Such a modified CubeSat platform can potentially deliver a high performance to mass and cost ratios. The Asteroid Spectral Imaging Mission (ASPECT) is a three unit (3U) CubeSat mission built on these principles. It is part of the AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment) project to the binary asteroid Didymos. ASPECT is equipped with a visible to near-infrared hyperspectral imager and will deliver both technological knowledge as well as scientific data about the origin and evolution of Solar System small bodies.
We developed a tunable surface-micromachined Fabry–Pérot interferometer for the thermal infrared spectral region of wavelengths 7–11 µm. The device is controlled through capacitive actuation with the maximum applied voltage near 30 V. The transmission characteristics, as a function of the tuning actuation, were recorded for several samples with a Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer. Two different device designs are compared in terms of the transmission peak width and height evolution along the actuation. Numerical simulations and the established analytical Airy expression are exploited in order to bridge the gap between an ideal-model performance and the measurement results. Emphasis in the analysis is on the movable mirror unidealities and their implications in the performance. Finally, we present example data recorded with a laboratory setup of a gas spectrometer, based on the device under study.
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