SUMMARY OF THE 16th MEETING OF THE SPACE MISSION PLANNING ADVISORY GROUP (SMPAG)

24 & 25 March 2021

WebEx Virtual meeting

The 16th meeting of the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) took place on 24 and 25 March 2021, in a format of two half-day virtual meetings, with the first day dedicated to a Workshop on Workplan items and the second day to a regular SMPAG meeting. The meeting was chaired by the European Space Agency (ESA), the current SMPAG Chair (2020-2022) and supported by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) as the Secretariat. 

1) Adoption of the agenda and introduction of participants.

The agenda was adopted. The following agencies and institutions were represented at the meeting (AEM, ASI, CNSA, CNES, Czech Republic, DLR, ESA, FFG, ISA, JAXA, KASI, NASA, ROSA, UKSA). Observers for ASE, COSPAR, IAWN and UNOOSA participated at the meeting. The meeting was also attended by observers for the Secure World Foundation and for the Canadian Space Agency. Representatives from the SMPAG Legal WG, from the US State Department, the Royal Observatory of Belgium, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Charles University and the University of Vienna also attended the meeting.

 

I. PART,  24 March – WORKSHOP on SMPAG Workplan items

2) Workshop on SMPAG Workplan items

Under this agenda item, lead agencies of workplan items reported on the status of the progress. Updates were given for the following SMPAG workplan items, presentations on the status of workplan items are available at:

http://www.smpag.net/documents_and_presentations

5.1 Criteria and thresholds for impact response actions (NASA): A final report was submitted in Feb. 2019.  Reference no. SMPAG-RP-003, v. 2.0 (Feb 2019). The task is considered completed. It was noted that the agreed criteria have already been implemented in several documents of member Agencies.

5.2 Mitigation mission types and technologies to be considered (UKSA): update was presented.

5.3 Mapping of threat scenarios to mission types (ESA):  status is unchanged.

5.4 Reference missions for different NEO threat scenarios (ASI):  update was presented.

5.5 A plan for action in case of a credible threat (NASA/IAA):  The role of SMPAG in case of a credible threat was discussed. SMPAG is expected to have a supporting role as defined in the ToR.

5.6 Communication guidelines in case of a credible threat (NASA): If real preparations for a Planetary Defence mission start special communication guidelines might be required. As communication is mainly addressed by IAWN this activity could be combined with an IAWN activity on communication.

5.7 Produce a roadmap for future work on planetary defence (DLR): This is a living document. The last report carries reference no. SMPAG-RP-001, v.2.0, 2017 Oct on the SMPAG webpage. A new version (SMPAG-RP-001, v. 3.0) is in preparation.

5.8 Consequences, including failure, of NEO mitigation space missions (ESA/FFG): an update was presented. A first complete draft will be distributed soon for review by SMPAG members.

5.9. Criteria for deflection targeting (ROSA): update was presented.

5.10 Study of the nuclear device option: A compilation of existing literature that addresses issues related to NEO mitigation using a nuclear device is ongoing. SMPAG members are invited to provide additional references (publication references and abstracts/summaries). and also a text for an introduction and background information.

5.11 Toolbox for a characterisation payload (CNES): no specific update. Several other update presentations mentioned that their work includes activities relevant for this task. Additional input for a database of instruments and capabilities should be provided.

3) Future of workplan

The SMPAG Chair put for discussion a proposal to merge some of the workplan items and to split the merged items along 1) mitigation missions, and 2) mitigation technologies, including NEO properties. The SMPAG also considered to continue with the present format of the meetings, i.e. to have a dedicated Workplan workshop a day ahead of the regular SMPAG meeting and perhaps concentrate at one item at a time. The Chair pointed out that one of the aims of the workplan activities is to develop access to a set of engineering level databases, tools, instruments and references which will allow a quick assessment of mitigation mission options in case of a real threat. The outline of the Chair’s proposal is contained in Annex 1.

4) Potential SMPAG Exercise

SMPAG held a general discussion on the idea put forward by the SMPAG Chair to perform

a SMPAG exercise, similar to the IAWN practice when it organizes observing campaigns as

exercises to test the network's real-world capabilities to support planetary defence. It was discussed that SMPAG could take a virtual impactor from the risk list as realistic target, assess options for a mitigation space mission and test the capabilities, procedure, coordination, communication capacities and resulting type and format of the results. Tentative ideas for a potential SMPAG exercise were put forward by the SMPAG Chair for discussion and are contained in Annex 2. The idea of such a SMPAG exercise was welcomed by the workshop participants.

SMPAG agreed that ASI, upon its initiative, would organize a splinter meeting in a couple of months to evaluate this proposal, define time-lines for the exercise and identify contributing agencies. SMPAG thanked ASI for this initiative and appealed to SMPAG members for their cooperation in the upcoming splinter meeting.

5) Other matters 

The observer for SWF informed SMPAG Workshop attendees of a recent poll in the United States, where citizens were asked about their views and support for various national space activities. In the US, spending on space to monitor climate change received the highest level of support, and monitoring asteroids that could strike the Earth received the 2nd highest level of support, both far more than spending on basic space science, or of human spaceflight. The poll was conducted in Feb 2021. According to the survey, citizens are supportive of asteroid monitoring and defense. More info at: https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/poll-shows-publics-space-priority-is-monitoring-earth-not-sending-people-to-the-moon-or-mars/ and at https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-travel-exploration-poll/

 

II. PART, 25 March  – SMPAG MEETING

6) Status and General Items

The SMPAG Chair presented a chart of SMPAG members. The status is available at

http://www.smpag.net/smpag_members. There have been no new applications for the membership.

The SMPAG Chair also informed SMPAG that he will be retiring from the position of SMPAG Chair as of the next SMPAG meeting and introduced Detlef Koschny, Acting Head of the ESA Planetary Defence Office as his successor to ESA chairmanship of SMPAG. SMPAG members expressed gratitude to Gerhard Drolshagen for his diligent and professional leadership as the SMPAG Chair and welcomed Detlef Koschny as the new SMPAG Chair.

7) NEO related activities in SMPAG member states (all)

Under this item, in tour de table, the following members of SMPAG presented current and future activities in the area of planetary defence: ESA, AEM, ASI, CNSA, CNES, Czech Republic, DLR, FFG, ISA, NASA, ROSA, UKSA. A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences also informed SMPAG that upon his discussions with Roscosmos, the Agency informed that they are in a period of reorganization and that a focal point from Roscosmos for SMPAG will be appointed shortly. Several presentations under this agenda item are available at smpag.net (16th SMAG meeting, 25 March).

8) SMPAG Ad-Hoc Working Group on Legal Issues

The coordinator of the SMPAG Legal WG, Alissa Haddaji, recalled that the final version of the report entitled “Planetary Defence: Legal Overview and Assessment - Report by the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) Ad-Hoc Working Group on Legal Issues to SMPAG” that SMPAG endorsed as an internal SMPAG report at its 14th meeting, has been made available on the SMPAG website smpag.net as document SMPAG-RP-004.

SMPAG discussed ideas how to further publicize the report and agreed that, among others, an executive summary will be made available as a conference room paper for the 58th session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee, to which the SMPAG Chair will report under the agenda item Near-Earth object, scheduled for 22 April.

The coordinator of the SMPAG Legal WG also presented several ideas for the future workplan of this working group as well as addressed the amount of workload the coordinating role of such work, in particular report coordination, entails. SMPAG discussed that SMPAG members should explore possible funding opportunities/grants to compensate the work hours put in by the coordinator in the future and commended Alissa Haddaji for her work as coordinator of the SMPAG Legal WG.

SMPAG also thanked all current members of the SMPAG Legal WG for their dedicated work and invited them to renew their memberships and/or to nominate new members by informing the SMPAG Chair and Secretariat. SMPAG agreed that the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Legal Issues would be kept active to continue providing advice on legal issues expected to surface during SMPAG activities. One item discussed for potential future work is the decision to act. SMPAG has no decision power on Planetary Defense actions. However, according to the ToR, SMPAG has the mandate to address this issue and provide e.g. proposals and recommendations for decision timelines and implementation plans. Potential specific new activities of the Legal WG will be discussed in future.

9) Report by IAWN

The coordinator for IAWN (NASA PDCO), Kelly Fast, presented developments since the last,11th ,meeting of IAWN, held on 23 September 2020 in a virtual format. The IAWN now has 30 signatories, their capabilities and the list of the IAWN steering committee members can be found on the IAWN website at iawn.net, which is supported by NASA’s Planetary Data System Small Bodies Node at the University of Maryland as part of its Minor Planet Center management activities.

The coordinator also informed the SMPAG that IAWN will hold its next, 12th meeting on 30 and 31 March, where signatories will present the status of their activities. Main agenda items for IAWN at its upcoming meetings also include a presentation of the on-going IAWN Apophis Campaign, reports by the Minor Planet Centre and International Astronomical Union, overview of the artificial satellite policy for the Minor Planet Center. Other items to be addressed are: an ESA contract on an observational database for artificial satellites, ESA asteroid impact warning/alert notification text blocks, proposal for an International Year of Planetary Defense as well as issues of communications for planetary defense.

10) Update on on-going and planed missions relevant for PD: 

SMPAG exchanged information on the following on-going and planned activities of its members:

  • Hayabusa2 (JAXA): Sample return mission Hayabusa2 has conducted various tasks since its arrival at the target asteroid (162173) Ryugu in June 2018 and returned to Earth on 6 December 2020 with a total mass of 5.4 grams of samples, exceeding its target mass of 1.5 grams. The current Phase 1 includes the analysis and description of samples and will continue until June 2021. In June 2022, international analysis will begin. The extended mission includes a scheduled arrival to a very small asteroid “1998 KY26” in 2031.
  • OSIRIS-REx (NASA): Activities of this NASA mission, with the participation of Canada, France and Japan, in 2020 included, among others a Touch-and-Go (TAG) sampling manoeuvre executed on 20 October with substantial sample mass collected (100’s of grams). Upcoming activities in 2021 include the Asteroid Departure Manoeuvre (ADM) - Bennu departure date 10 May 2021. Extended mission scenarios for the time after sample capsule return in September 2023 are being investigated.
  • DART mission (NASA): Is now scheduled for launch in November 2021. The DART spacecraft is expected to impact the 160-metre-sized moonlet of the binary near-Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos in the fall of 2022 to demonstrate a kinetic impact orbit deflection technique. A controlled impact experiment to increase confidence of kinetic impact predictions and improve understanding of asteroid physical properties and high-speed collisions.
  • NEO Surveyor Mission (NASA): NEO Surveyor Space-based IR Observatory with an objective to find 65% of undiscovered Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) >140 m in 5 years (goal: 90% in 10 years). The NEOSM should allow to estimate sizes directly from IR signatures of the NEOs and deliver new traclet data daily to the Minor Planet Center.
  • Hera mission (ESA):  As a follow-up mission to DART, the Hera mission is planned to encounter the Didymos asteroid system in 2026 and provide a valuable post-impact assessment of the effects of the DART deflection test. System PDR successfully completed in December 2020. Currently, the mission is in Phase C (subsystems PDRs, CDRs).
  • Rendezvous Mission with Apophis for Scientific Investigation and Planetary Defense (KASI): The 3rd Revision of the Basic Plan for Promotion of Space Development includes the following milestones: 1) ’22: Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter; 2) mid-20’s: Lunar lander mission, planned; and 3) 20’s-30’s: Asteroid mission(s), planned. For Apophis, preliminary plans include the following milestones: 1) Earth departure: 19 April 2028; 2) Apophis rendezvous: 4 February, 2029 with near-optimal launch opportunities persisting until mid-2028.
  • M-ARGO: Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer (ESA): This would be a CubeSat mission to study a small asteroid. The Phase-A study for this mission has finished, Phase B has been approved and will start in the first half of 2022.

 

11) SMPAG statement of support for small-class, high-velocity flyby missions to small bodies for planetary defence

SMPAG agreed on the following statement of support for small-class, high-velocity flyby missions to small bodies for planetary defence (also included in Annex 3 to the present report):

SMPAG recognizes the importance of small-class, high-velocity flyby missions to small bodies for planetary defence. These missions can return unique scientific information that would greatly improve our understanding of the physical nature of small bodies, including those that are potentially hazardous. Furthermore, such missions motivate the advancement of instrumentation (e.g. multi-spectral imagers) and technologies (e.g. propulsion and navigation systems) relevant to the design and execution of hazardous-NEO reconnaissance and deflection missions. SMPAG therefore welcomes the emergence at the European Space Agency and JAXA of two high-velocity flyby missions: Comet Interceptor and DESTINY+, and would welcome further missions of this kind, which serve the purposes of both scientific discovery and planetary defence.

13) AOB

2021 Planetary Defense Conference, 26-30 April 2021 hosted by UNOOSA in cooperation with ESA will be held as a virtual WebEx event. Programme-at-a-glance is available at

http://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/smpag/2021_PDC_Programme_at_a_glance.pdf

The conference will be webcast.

14) Next SMPAG meeting:

The 17th SMPAG meeting will take place in a similar format as the 16th meeting, over two afternoons, on 13 and 14 October 2021 (TBC), via WebEx.

 

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Annex 1

SMPAG Workplan Items (including Chair’s proposal, Point 3 of meeting minutes)

  • 5.1 Criteria and thresholds for impact response actions (NASA)
    • Criteria have already been implemented in several documents of member states
  • 5.2 Mitigation mission types and technologies to be considered (UKSA)
  • 5.3 Mapping of threat scenarios to mission types (ESA)
  • 5.4 Reference missions for different NEO threat scenarios (ASI)
  • 5.5 A plan for action in case of a credible threat (NASA/IAA)
    • SMPAG has supporting role as defined in ToR
  • 5.6 Communication guidelines in case of a credible threat (NASA)
    • Could be combined with IAWN activity on communication
  • 5.7 Roadmap for future work on planetary defense (DLR)
    • Living document
  • 5.8 Consequences, including failure, of NEO mitigation space missions
    • Draft will be distributed soon for review
  • 5.9 Criteria for deflection targeting (ROSA)
  • 5.10 Study the nuclear device option (all)
    • Provide more references and text for introduction
  • 5.11 Toolbox for a NEO characterization payload (CNES)

Provide input for database of instruments and capabilities

  • Activities 5.2, 5.9, and perhaps parts of 5.3 could be combined into 1 activity (Mitigation technologies)
  • Activities 5.3, 5.4, and potentially 5.5 could be combined as well (Mitigation missions)
  • The development of visible output should be accelerated.
  • The aim is to produce reports, databases or tools for practical applications at the engineering level.
  • Some activities could be completed with higher priority and support from all members. An update of the workplan is envisaged

 

 

ANNEX 2

Potential SMPAG Exercise (Chair’s proposal - Point 4 of meeting minutes)

 

Main idea: exercise the SMPAG response to a threatening object Use a ́real ́ object matching the SMPAG criteria for action, i.e.

  • Size > 50 m, impact within 50 years
  • Assume artificially that the NEO has an impact probability > 1% Object selection:
  • Make a list of objects from the risk list which fulfil criteria
  • Make a random selection of 1 object from the list (this should avoid introducing biases, but some modifications are possible, TBD)

About 55 objects in the risk list of ESA presently fulfil the criteria

For the exercise use the orbit of the virtual impactor from this NEO This will also define the impact time
For the assessment of mitigation options use the real mass uncertainty.

The exercise should be limited to the SMPAG mandate.
Only assess the technical possibilities and options for a mitigation space mission (or several, including reconnaissance missions)

Not part of the exercise is e.g. :

  • The decision processes
  • The actual impact corridor on ground
  • Civil protection issues

The objective is to provide options of mitigation space missions (if any) to decision makers. In this process the capabilities and procedures of SMPAG can be developed and tested. The type and format of the results of the assessment can be developed. Deficiencies in e.g. tools for the assessment, hardware, and in the flow of information and coordination should be identified. The results of such exercises will certainly receive attention.

The idea of such a SMPAG exercise was welcomed by the workshop participants

Potential next steps:

  • Identify participants and potential leader
  • Select object
  • Define procedure ​​​​​​​

 

ANNEX 3

SMPAG Statement of support for small-class, high-velocity flyby missions to small bodies for planetary defence

SMPAG recognizes the importance of small-class, high-velocity flyby missions to small bodies for planetary defence. These missions can return unique scientific information that would greatly improve our understanding of the physical nature of small bodies, including those that are potentially hazardous. Furthermore, such missions motivate the advancement of instrumentation (e.g. multi-spectral imagers) and technologies (e.g. propulsion and navigation systems) relevant to the design and execution of hazardous-NEO reconnaissance and deflection missions. SMPAG therefore welcomes the emergence at the European Space Agency and JAXA of two high-velocity flyby missions: Comet Interceptor and DESTINY+, and would welcome further missions of this kind, which serve the purposes of both scientific discovery and planetary defence.

 

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