Experimental Determination of the Structural Coefficient of Restitution of a Bouncing Asteroid Lander
The structural coefficient of restitution describes the kinetic energy dissipation upon low-velocity (~0.1 m/s) impact of a small asteroid lander, MASCOT, against a hard, ideally elastic plane surface. It is a crucial worst-case input for mission analysis for landing MACOT on a 1km asteroid in 2018. We conducted pendulum tests and describe their analysis and the results.
physics.space-ph↗