The Castalia mission to Main Belt Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro

Snodgrass, C.; Jones, G.H.; Boehnhardt, H.; Gibbings, A.; Homeister, M.; Andre, N.; Beck, P.; Bentley, M.S.; Bertini, I.; Bowles, N.; Capria, M.T.; Carr, C.; Ceriotti, M.; Coates, A.J.; Della Corte, V.; Donaldson Hanna, K.L.; Fitzsimmons, A.; Gutiérrez, P.J.; Hainaut, O.R.; Herique, A.; ... (2018). The Castalia mission to Main Belt Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro. Advances in space research, 62(8), pp. 1947-1976. Elsevier 10.1016/j.asr.2017.09.011

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We describe Castalia, a proposed mission to rendezvous with a Main Belt Comet (MBC), 133P/Elst-Pizarro. MBCs are a recently
discovered population of apparently icy bodies within the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which may represent the remnants
of the population which supplied the early Earth with water. Castalia will perform the first exploration of this population by characterising
133P in detail, solving the puzzle of the MBC’s activity, and making the first in situ measurements of water in the asteroid belt.
In many ways a successor to ESA’s highly successful Rosetta mission, Castalia will allow direct comparison between very different classes
of comet, including measuring critical isotope ratios, plasma and dust properties. It will also feature the first radar system to visit a minor
body, mapping the ice in the interior. Castalia was proposed, in slightly different versions, to the ESA M4 and M5 calls within the Cosmic
Vision programme. We describe the science motivation for the mission, the measurements required to achieve the scientific goals, and the
proposed instrument payload and spacecraft to achieve these.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Space Research and Planetary Sciences

UniBE Contributor:

Rubin, Martin

Subjects:

500 Science > 520 Astronomy
600 Technology > 620 Engineering

ISSN:

0273-1177

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Dora Ursula Zimmerer

Date Deposited:

27 Nov 2017 14:04

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:07

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.asr.2017.09.011

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.106528

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/106528

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