Physical Characterization of Asteroids Candidates of Marco Polo Mission

International audienceThe principal scientific objective of the Marco Polo mission is to return unaltered NEO materials. Marco Polo will allow us to analyze the samples in terrestrial laboratories, thereby obtaining measurements that cannot yet beperformed from a robotic spacecraft. The selection of the target asteroids for the mission has important consequences in terms of mission design, constraints, and operational requirements. A list of asteroids as possible targets for the Marco Polo mission has been drawn, taken into account both dynamical and physical constraints. The key parameters of this list were the accessibility of the object (the delta-V amount for the encounter with the target) and the desirable, primitive composition requirements of the target deduced from the groundbased data (mainly from colors and spectroscopy)