What is Stardust-Reloaded
The Stardust-Reloaded project addresses the growing need for a sustainable exploitation of space, the resilience of the space environment,
the threat and opportunities coming from asteroids, and the compelling need for properly trained specialists who can tackle these issues.
It builds on an earlier project called Stardust, which pioneered new techniques for asteroid and space debris monitoring, removal and deflection,
exploiting for the first time the synergies between the communities studying asteroids in and around the solar system, and the one studying
space debris locally around the Earth.
Duration: 01.01.2019 -- 31.12.2022
The role of the Belgrade research team:
within the project, the research at University of Belgrade addresses the importance of small
near-Earth asteroids.
The criticality of small asteroids
Asteroid population models are the main source of information about the number of objects in the
size-range below a few thousands of meters. Main belt asteroids (MBAs) and near-Earth objects (NEOs) do
not represent independent populations, as they are closely connected by evolutionary processes and
dynamical transport mechanisms, associated to orbital resonances and semimajor axis drifts caused
by non-gravitational perturbations.
One of the objectives of the research project is to develop a new distribution model of small NEOs
in the size range ~1-100 meters
Asteroids in the size range ~1-100 meters are also the less studied so far.
Understanding the physical properties of these asteroids is fundamental to develop a
coherent population model. At the same time, these bosied are the best candidates for asteroid mining
and asteroid redirect missions. One of the objectives of the research project is to
improve the understaing of the physical properties of small asteroids.
Modern observational facilities dedicated to the discovery of NEOs are able to find
more and more objects every year. On the other hand, resources dedicated to space exploration
are limited, and only a few number of them can be visited with spacecrafts. One of
the objectives of the research project is to develop a so called "Asteroid Criticality
Index", that is a ranking of objects meant to identify what are the asteroids more
interesting to be visited first.
