Multibody simulation of a spacecraft landing in a microgravity environment by means of ESA’s DCAP software

The investigation of planets, moons and small bodies, including comets and asteroids, can contribute substantially to our understanding of the formation and history of the Solar System. Few examples can effectively illustrate the diverse challenges of such exploration missions: JAXA Hayabusa mission attempted to take samples from the surface of the asteroid Itokawa and successfully returned it to Earth in 2010; ESA’s cornerstone mission Rosetta [1] has been the first to rendezvous with a comet and to deploy the lander Philae on the comet’s surface in 2014; Marco Polo mission [2] is being considered as a sample return mission to a near-Earth asteroid to be jointly developed by JAXA and ESA, with launch planned in the 2018-19 timeframe.