Considerations on the process of target selection for the Comet Interceptor mission
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Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Comet Interceptor is an ESA science mission with payload contributions from ESA Member States and with an international participation by JAXA. It is the first mission that is being designed, built, and potentially launched before its target is known. This approach will enable the spacecraft to perform the first mission to a Long Period Comet from the Oort Cloud, as these comets have fleeting visits to the inner Solar System lasting only months to years from first discovery, too short for the usual process of mission development to be followed. In this paper we describe a number of factors that need to be considered in selecting a target for the mission, including scientific, orbital, spacecraft and instrument constraints, and discussion of different prioritisation strategies. We find that, in the case where we have a choice of targets, our decisions will mostly be driven by orbital information, which we will have relatively early on, with information on the activity level of the comet an important but secondary consideration. As cometary activity levels are notoriously hard to predict based on early observations alone, this prioritisation / decision approach based more on orbits gives us confidence that a good comet that is compatible with the spacecraft constraints will be selectable with sufficient warning time to allow the mission to intercept it.
Date Issued
2026-03-15
Date Acceptance
2025-11-25
Citation
Icarus, 2026, 447
ISSN
0019-1035
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Icarus
Volume
447
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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Subjects
Astronomy & Astrophysics
AU
C/2001 Q4 NEAT
Flyby missions (545)
Long period comets (933)
NUCLEUS
ODIN
PHOTOMETRY
Physical Sciences
RATIO
Science & Technology
SPECTROSCOPY
T7
WATER PRODUCTION
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
116887
Date Publish Online
2025-11-26