A pair of CubeSats using ground penetrating radar could map the interior of near-Earth asteroids

Characterizing near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is critical if we hope to eventually stop one from hitting us. But so far, missions to do so have been expensive, which is never good for space exploration. So a team led by Patrick Bambach of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany developed a mission concept that utilizes a relatively inexpensive 6U CubeSat (or, more accurately, two of them) to characterize the interior of NEAs that would cost only a fraction of the price of previous missions.The mission, known as the Deep Interior Scanning CubeSat mission to a rubble pile near-Earth asteroid, or DISCUS, was initially floated in 2018. Its central architecture involves two separate 6U CubeSats equipped with a powerful radar. They would travel to opposite sides of an NEA and direct a radar to pass through the NEA's interior.To understand more about the mission architecture, it's best to look at the type of asteroid best suited to being visited by DISCUS. The authors of th...