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NEA-Scout
NEA-Scout [NASA]
NEA-Scout (Near Earth Asteroid Scout) is a cubesat mission by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center to perform a slow flyby and rendezvous maneuver with a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) and characterize it in a way that is relevant to human exploration.
This mission is based on the JPL Deep Space NanoSat 6U cubesat Bus and features an 80 m2 solar sail. The payload will consist of a COTS 4-band spectrometer.
NEA-Scout will perform several lunar fly-bys before beginning the cruise phase to the asteroid. The maximun earth distance will be about ~0.35 AU and the solar distance will be about ~0.9-1.1 AU. NEA-Scout is to perform at least one close, slow flyby (<10 m/s).
NEA-Scout is one of 13 cubesats planned to be carried with the Orion Artemis-1 mission into a heliocentric orbit in cis-lunar space on the maiden flight of the SLS (Block 1) iCPS launch vehicle in 2021.
| Nation: | USA |
|---|---|
| Type / Application: | Asteroid fly-by |
| Operator: | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| Contractors: | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
| Equipment: | |
| Configuration: | CubeSat (6U) |
| Propulsion: | Solar sail |
| Power: | 4 deployable solar arrays, batteries |
| Lifetime: | 2.5 years |
| Mass: | ~12 kg |
| Orbit: |
| Satellite | COSPAR | Date | LS | Launch Vehicle | Remarks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NEA-Scout | - | 2022 | CCK LC-39B | SLS (Block 1) iCPS | with Orion Artemis-1, BioSentinel, CuSP, LunaH-Map, Lunar-IceCube, LunIR, EQUULEUS, OMOTENASHI, ArgoMoon, CU-E3, Miles |
References:
- Payam Banazadeh, Andreas Frick: Lunar Flashlight & NEA Scout – A NanoSat Architecture for Deep Space Exploration
