Bridge to the stars: A mission concept to an interstellar object

Moore, K.; Courville, S. W.; Ferguson, Sierra; Schoenfeld, Ashley; LLera, Kristie; Agrawal, Rachana; Brack, D. N.; Buhler, P. B.; Connour, Kyle; Czaplinski, Ellen; DeLuca, Michael; Deutsch, A. N.; Hammond, N. P.; Kuettel, Donald; Marusiak, Angela G.; Nerozzi, S.; Stuart, Jeffrey; Tarnas, J. D.; Thelen, Alexander; Castillo‐Rogez, Julie; Smythe, W. D.; Landau, Damon; Mitchell, K. L.; Budney, C. J.

doi:10.1016/j.pss.2020.105137

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…The recent discovery of the first two such ISOs opens the potential for the direct observation of these exobodies, both telescopically (see, e.g., (Trilling et al 2018;Guzik et al 2019), and with flyby, rendezvous and sample return spacecraft missions (Seligman & Laughlin 2018;Hein et al 2019bHein et al , 2020. These missions can provide direct, in situ observatons on the shape, density, composition, isotopic abundances, and galactic history of ISOs (Eubanks et al 2020;Moore et al 2021). The amazing diversity of the planetary systems being found in exoplanetary research (Winn & Fabrycky 2015;Perryman 2018;Lingam & Loeb 2021) strongly suggests that there will a corresponding diversity in the ISOs passing through the solar system, especially considering ISOs will not just result from ejection from protoplanetary disks (Portegies Zwart et al 2018;Moro-Martín 2018a,b;Hands & Dehnen 2020), but also from processes during (Portegies Zwart 2020; Zhang & Lin 2020) and after (Eubanks 2019a) the main sequence lifetime of planetary systems, and even from the disruption of bodies in white dwarf (Rafikov 2018) or pulsar systems (Brook et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interstellar Objects in the Solar System: 1. Isotropic Kinematics from the Gaia Early Data Release 3

Eubanks¹,

Hein²,

Lingam³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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1I/'Oumuamua (or 1I) and 2I/Borisov (or 2I), the first InterStellar Objects (ISOs) discovered passing through the solar system, have opened up entirely new areas of exobody research. Finding additional ISOs and planning missions to intercept or rendezvous with these bodies will greatly benefit from knowledge of their likely orbits and arrival rates. Here, we use the local velocity distribution of stars from the Gaia Early Data Release 3 Catalogue of Nearby Stars and a standard gravitational focusing model to predict the velocity dependent flux of ISOs entering the solar system. With an 1I-type ISO number density of ∼0.1 AU −3 , we predict that a total of ∼6.9 such objects per year should pass within 1 AU of the Sun. There will be a fairly large high-velocity tail to this flux, with half of the incoming ISOs predicted to have a velocity at infinity, v ∞ , > 40 km s −1 . Our model predicts that ∼92% of incoming ISOs will be residents of the galactic thin disk, ∼6% (∼4 per decade) will be from the thick disk, ∼1 per decade will be from the halo and at most ∼3 per century will be unbound objects, ejected from our galaxy or entering the Milky Way from another galaxy. The rate of ISOs with very low v ∞ 1.5 km s −1 is so low in our model that any incoming very low velocity ISOs are likely to be previously lost solar system objects. Finally, we estimate a cometary ISO number density of ∼7 × 10 −5 AU −3 for 2I type ISOs, leading to discovery rates for these objects possibly approaching once per decade with future telescopic surveys.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interstellar Objects in the Solar System: 1. Isotropic Kinematics from the Gaia Early Data Release 3

Eubanks¹,

Hein²,

Lingam³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Given the population estimates from Do et al (2018), this campaign may see between 1 − 10 interstellar objects per year (Seligman & Laughlin 2018;Ivezić et al 2019). Moreover, the ESA's proposed Comet Interceptor (Jones & ESA Comet Interceptor Team 2019) mission or the NASA concept study BRIDGE (Moore et al 2021) will be well-positioned to provide in situ studies similar to the concept proposed in Seligman & Laughlin (2018). 9.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On The Spin Dynamics of Elongated Minor Bodies with Applications to a Possible Solar System Analogue Composition for `Oumuamua

Seligman,

Levine,

Cabot

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The first interstellar object, 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua), exhibited several unique properties, including an extreme aspect ratio, a lack of typical cometary volatiles, and a deviation from a Keplerian trajectory. Several authors have hypothesized that the non-gravitational acceleration was caused by either cometary outgassing or radiation pressure. Here, we investigate the spin dynamics of 'Oumuamua under the action of high surface area fractional activity and radiation pressure. We demonstrate that a series of transient jets that migrate across the illuminated surface will not produce a secular increase in the spin rate. We produce 3D tumbling simulations that approximate the dynamics of a surface covering jet, and show that the resulting synthetic light curve and periodogram are reasonably consistent with the observations. Moreover, we demonstrate that radiation pressure also produces a steady spin-state. While carbon monoxide (CO) has been dismissed as a possible accelerant because of its non-detection in emission by Spitzer, we show that outgassing from a surface characterized by a modest covering fraction of CO ice can satisfy the non-ballistic dynamics for a plausible range of assumed bulk densities and surface albedos. Spitzer upper limits on CO emission are, however, inconsistent with the CO production necessary to provide the acceleration. Nonetheless, an ad hoc but physically plausible explanation is that the activity level varied greatly during the time that the trajectory was monitored. We reproduce the astrometric analysis presented in Micheli et al. (2018), and verify that the non-gravitational acceleration was consistent with stochastic changes in outgassing.

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“…An impactor collision of this type would excavate a substantial amount of sub-surface material from an incoming interstellar object. This material could be closely examined by a companion flyby spacecraft, with a suite of instruments similar to those proposed for BRIDGE (Moore et al 2021), allowing for detailed characterization of the composition. Such a strategy was employed by the Deep Impact mission (A'Hearn et al 2005).…”

Section: Potential Rendezvous Targetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to ground and space-based observations of these future objects, in situ measurements would provide an oppor-tunity to characterize their composition and physical properties in detail (Seligman & Laughlin 2018). ESA's proposed Comet Interceptor mission (Geraint & ESO Comet Interceptor Team 2019;Pau Sánchez et al 2021) or the NASA concept study BRIDGE (Moore et al 2021) may be well-positioned to provide these observations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Population of Interstellar Objects Detectable with the LSST and Accessible for $\textit{In Situ}$ Rendezvous with Various Mission Designs

Hoover¹,

Seligman²,

Payne³

2021

Preprint

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The recently discovered population of interstellar objects presents us with the opportunity to characterize material from extrasolar planetary and stellar systems up close. The forthcoming Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will provide an unprecedented increase in sensitivity to these objects compared to the capabilities of currently operational observational facilities. In this paper, we generate a synthetic population of interstellar objects drawn from their galactic kinematics, and identify the distribution of impact parameters, eccentricities, hyperbolic velocities and sky locations of objects detectable with the LSST. This population is characterized by a clustering of trajectories in the direction of the solar apex and anti-apex, centered at orbital inclinations of ∼ 90 • . We identify the ecliptic or solar apex as the optimal sky locations to search for future interstellar objects as a function of survey limiting magnitude. Moreover, we identify the trajectories of detectable objects that will be reachable for in-situ rendezvous with a dedicated mission with the capabilities of the forthcoming Comet Interceptor or proposed BRIDGE concept. By scaling our fractional population statistics with the inferred spatial number density, we estimate that the LSST will detect of order ∼ 50 interstellar objects over the course of its ∼ 10 year observational campaign. Furthermore, we find that there should be of order ∼ 10 and ∼ 0.05 reachable targets for missions with propulsion capabilities comparable to BRIDGE and Comet Interceptor, respectively. These number estimates will be readily updateable when the number density and size frequency distribution of interstellar objects is better constrained.

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Bridge to the stars: A mission concept to an interstellar object

Cited by 23 publications

References 96 publications

Interstellar Objects in the Solar System: 1. Isotropic Kinematics from the Gaia Early Data Release 3

Interstellar Objects in the Solar System: 1. Isotropic Kinematics from the Gaia Early Data Release 3

On The Spin Dynamics of Elongated Minor Bodies with Applications to a Possible Solar System Analogue Composition for `Oumuamua

The Population of Interstellar Objects Detectable with the LSST and Accessible for $\textit{In Situ}$ Rendezvous with Various Mission Designs

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