Modeling of the Expected Performance for the German AsteroidFinder Mission

Abstract

<p>The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has selected the ASTEROIDFINDER (AF) experiment to be flown as the first of a new series of national compact satellite missions. The main goal of the mission is to search for Inner Earth Objects (IEOs) from a low earth orbit, using a 30cm class wide-field telescope and an array of CCDs. The mission, which is currently in its Phase A and whose launch is envisaged for 2012, shall scan the region of sky at small solar elongations for a minimum lifetime of one year.</p><p> This study reports the results of the modeling of the performance of the AF survey, under varying observing conditions and strategies. </p><p>The basis for the simulations is a population of some 56000 orbital elements of synthetic NEAs, kindly provided by A. Morbidelli. This distribution contains 1190 orbital elements for IEOs down to an absolute magnitude H=23.0. In addition, we also used the orbital elements of the currently known NEA population, taken from the database of the Minor Planet Center.</p>