dart – Politecnico di Milano – Progress in Research

Research by Politecnico protagonist of DART impactor launch

Posted on 07/03/202307/04/2023 by admin

Divert the trajectory of an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth by means of a controlled impact at full speed with a space probe. This was the challenge of the DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) by NASA, successfully completed on 26^th September 2022, in which the Politecnico was directly involved as part of the scientific team.

The first scientific results on the DART Mission have been published in the journal Nature in three different articles, co-authored by the researcher Fabio Ferrari from the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology at the Politecnico.

The article ‘Successful Kinetic Impact into an Asteroid for Planetary Defense’ describes the successful test of kinetic impact technology on the asteroid Dimorphos, demonstrating that it is an effective technique for planetary defence against possible asteroid threats.

The study ‘Ejecta from the DART-produced active asteroid Dimorphos’ describes the observations made using the Hubble Space Telescope on the material ejected by the impact of DART with the asteroid Dimorphos.

Finally, the effectiveness of the kinetic impact of a satellite in avoiding a potential collision with the Earth is demonstrated in ‘Momentum Transfer from the DART mission Kinetic Impact on Asteroid Dimorphos’ co-authored by the professor of Flight Mechanics at the Politecnico, Michèle Lavagna.

DART is a historic moment for space exploration: it is not only the first planetary defence test, but it is also the first time we visit a binary asteroid (a system where two asteroids orbit around a common centre of gravity) and where we have the opportunity to observe how an asteroid can react to an external stress. This has allowed us – and will allow us again in the coming months – to study the structure and evolutionary history of these celestial bodies, so close to us but still barely known.
Fabio Ferrari

Read the three articles

Successful Kinetic Impact into an Asteroid for Planetary Defense

Momentum Transfer from DART Mission Kinetic Impact on Asteroid Dimorphos

Ejecta from the DART-produced active asteroid Dimorphos

LUMIO mission: Politecnico leads phase B

Posted on 07/11/202208/11/2022 by admin

Politecnico di Milano and the European Space Agency (ESA) have signed the contract for the development of the Phase B study of the LUMIO mission (Lunar Meteoroid Impacts Observer). After a successful Phase A carried out in 2020-2021, the Phase B has been kicked off on September 28th, 2022, and will last 12 months.

The study will be led by the DART group at the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology, and has the objective of consolidating the mission design and the CubeSat platform/payload design.

LUMIO is framed within ESA’s GSTP, and has received support from the national delegations of Italy (ASI) and Norway (NOSA).

The European consortium for the LUMIO mission is constituted by Politecnico di Milano, Argotec, Leonardo, IMT, Nautilus, and S&T Norway.

Our university is leading the consortium and will be responsible for the LUMIO mission analysis, guidance, navigation, and control system, autonomous navigation experiment, scientific elaboration of mission data, and the management of the project.

Argotec will lead the CubeSat system design, Leonardo will be responsible for the LUMIO-Cam payload design, IMT will develop the X-band transponder and the solar array drive mechanism, and Nautilus will design the ground segment and the flight dynamics operations. Moreover, S&T Norway will be responsible for the on-board payload data processing unit design to process the data gathered by the LUMIO-Cam.

LUMIO is a 12 units CubeSat, which means that it has a dimension of approximately 20x20x30 cm with a mass of around 25 kg. The miniaturized satellite will fly on a sophisticated orbit about the lagrangian point L2 of the Earth-Moon system.

The objective is monitoring the far side of the Moon to detect light flashes associated to meteoroid impacts. This is to complement data gathered by Earth-based observatories and to refine the meteoroid flux models hitting the Earth-Moon system. The high frame-rate images acquired by the LUMIO-Cam will be processed in real time and onboard to detect the light flashes due to the impacts and they will be downloaded on ground for further elaboration.

LICIACube witnessed NASA/DART impact test with asteroid

Posted on 27/09/202230/09/2022 by admin

Along night time, September 26-27, the NASA DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally impacted, at almost 25000 km/h, the asteroid Dimorphos, the smaller body in the Didymos binary asteroid system.
DART represents the first attempt to experimentally verify the humanity capability to deflect potentially Earth-threatening asteroid by driving a space probe to crash into the celestial body at maximum relative speed to shift the natural body orbit.

A crucial role in the mission is played by LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids), the small spacecraft entirely Italian-made, which will go down in history as the first European CubeSat to fly in deep space, far from our protected terrestrial environment.

After being released by DART, last September 12, LICIACube flew by the asteroid few tens of km far, witnessing DART’s impact and avoiding the cloud of generated fragments, taking and recording images at the highest resolution possible, thanks to its two on-board cameras: the newly formed crater and the ejecta plume are targeted, supplying unique and fundamental data to scientists about the small celestial body features and the occurred impact dynamics.
The ASTRA research group researchers, led by professor Michèle Lavagna, Giovanni Zanotti, Michele Ceresoli and Andrea Capannolo from the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology gave a key contribution to this futuristic mission success.

During the past months, they hard worked in defining the LICIACube trajectory from the deployment until the asteroid flyby, while during the last weeks, after LICIA release from DART, they redesigned the crucial orbital manoeuvres to correct the CubeSat trajectory, exploiting the data sent on Earth by the small probe. Throughout the whole project, they worked in synergy with the Italian Space Agency, University of Bologna, Argotec S.r.l. and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory personell.

The maneouvers they constantly worked on and performed by the small on-board engine, where aimed to avoid the debris generated by the impact while optimally pointing the on-board cameras to take the highest number of useful images, which will be later downloaded to Earth, to let the National Institute of Astrophysics scientists, coordinated by Dr Elisabetta Dotto, leader of the mission, work on their postprocessing.

LICIA represents a technological pathfinder and a primacy in the CubeSat arena, as it paves the way for such class of satellites to gaina role even on highly challenging space missions; moreover, LICIA witnesses a successful and profitable collaboration between Academy, Research Center and small enterprise, under the coordination of the Italian Space Agency, confirming the excellence of the technical-scientific competences of our Country and the professionality of our young researchers in an extremely high-profile international arena,
Michèle Lavagna

Credits cover image: NASA – Johns Hopkins, APL – Steve Gribben.png