A mission concept for the low-cost large-scale exploration and characterisation of near earth objects

This paper presents the preliminary mission and science analysis of a new mission concept for the large scale, low-cost exploration of Near Earth Objects (NEOs). The concept is to enable close range observations of NEOs by performing close flybys of a series of NEOs at one of their nodal points, with pairs of small spacecraft flying in formation. The paper presents a preliminary assessment of accessible asteroids and multi-target tour trajectories from data available in the JPL small-body database.The main instruments on board each spacecraft are a camera and a LIDAR which together can be used for orbit determination, surface imaging, direct asteroid ranging and asteroid mass estimation via intersatellite ranging. The paper provides a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the measurable quantities during each flyby. In particular, the feasibility of a novel method of NEO mass estimation is assessed.     

Link budget and background noise for satellite quantum key distribution

Optical quantum communication exploiting satellites is the most promising field to enable global quantum communication.