Abstract: The Brazilian deep space mission ASTER, as temporarily named, plans to send a small spacecraft to encounter and investigate the triple asteroid 2001-SN263. The launch is scheduled (initially) to occur in 2015, arriving in 2018. The main motivation of the mission is the development of technology and expertise to leverage the national space sector. Within the scientific goals, the investigation of the still unknown asteroid 2001-SN263. The main project guideline is to aggregate the widest possible Brazilian involvement in the platform, the development and operation of subsystems, integration, payload, as well as in the tracking, navigation, guidance and control of the probe. To meet this guideline, among others, the decision for the development of a laser altimeter in Brazil to fly in the mission was taken. This effort is currently coordinated by a group of researchers from the aerospace engineering personnel of UFABC. This article presents the preliminary development plan for the design of this instrument, which was called ALR (ASTER Laser Rangefinder).

Abstract An algorithm was developed to obtain the air chemical equilibrium composition. The air was considered to be composed of 79% N2 and 21% O2, and the models are 5 chemical species, N2, O2, NO, N, O, and 7 chemical species, N2, O2, NO, N, O, NO+, e-, respectively. The air chemical equilibrium composition is obtained through the equilibrium constants method and it was used the Absolute Newton method for convergence. The algorithm can be coupled as a subroutine into a Computational Fluid Dynamics code, given the flow field over an atmosphere reentry vehicle where, due to high velocities, dissociative chemical reactions and air ionization can occur. This work presents results of air chemical equilibrium composition for pressures of 1, 5, 10, 50 and 100 atm in a temperature range from 300 to 30000K.