Science and Exploration

Design Reference Asteroid for the OSIRIS-REx Mission Target (101955) Bennu

By Keith Cowing
September 16, 2014
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Design Reference Asteroid for the OSIRIS-REx Mission Target (101955) Bennu
asteroid (101955) Bennu
astro-ph.EP

The Design Reference Asteroid (DRA) is a compilation of all that is known about the OSIRIS-REx mission target, asteroid (101955) Bennu.
It contains our best knowledge of the properties of Bennu based on an extensive observational campaign that began shortly after its discovery, and has been used to inform mission plan development and flight system design. The DRA will also be compared with post-encounter science results to determine the accuracy of our Earth-based characterization efforts. The extensive observations of Bennu in 1999 has made it one of the best-characterized near-Earth asteroids. Many physical parameters are well determined, and span a number of categories: Orbital, Bulk, Rotational, Radar, Photometric, Spectroscopic, Thermal, Surface Analog, and Environment Properties. Some results described in the DRA have been published in peer-reviewed journals while others have been reviewed by OSIRIS-REx Science Team members and/or external reviewers.

Some data, such as Surface Analog Properties, are based on our best knowledge of asteroid surfaces, in particular those of asteroids Eros and Itokawa. This public release of the OSIRIS-REx Design Reference Asteroid is a annotated version of the internal OSIRIS-REx document OREX-DOCS-04.00-00002, Rev 9 (accepted by the OSIRIS-REx project on 2014-April-14). The supplemental data products that accompany the official OSIRIS-REx version of the DRA are not included in this release. We are making this document available as a service to future mission planners in the hope that it will inform their efforts.

Carl W. Hergenrother, Maria Antonietta Barucci, Olivier Barnouin, Beau Bierhaus, Richard P. Binzel, William F. Bottke, Steve Chesley, Ben C. Clark, Beth E. Clark, Ed Cloutis, Christian Drouet d’Aubigny, Marco Delbo, Josh Emery, Bob Gaskell, Ellen Howell, Lindsay Keller, Michael Kelley, John Marshall, Patrick Michel, Michael Nolan, Bashar Rizk, Dan Scheeres, Driss Takir, David D. Vokrouhlick, Ed Beshore, Dante S. Lauretta (Submitted on 16 Sep 2014)

Comments: 116 pages, 42 figures, 10 tables

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)

Cite as: arXiv:1409.4704 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1409.4704v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history From: Carl Hergenrother [v1] Tue, 16 Sep 2014 17:13:28 GMT (5389kb)

http://arxiv.org/abs/1409.4704

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