Abstract:
The study of asteroids and, in particular, Near Earth Asteroids (NEA, the acronym in English Near Earth Asteroids) is fundamental for understanding the formation and evolution of the Solar System. The surface characterization of these celestial bodies is carried out mainly from photometry and spectroscopy techniques, which allow obtaining information about their mineralogy and physical structure. These techniques can be employed through data from terrestrial telescopes, orbital platforms and space probes. One of the most notable space missions was the Hayabusa I mission of the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), which studied the asteroid (25143) Itokawa and provided valuable information about the physical and compositional characteristics of this asteroid. The surfaces of planetary bodies have a complicated structure, as they have different minerals in their composition, different textures and reliefs. There is a set of mathematical models that propose to describe the interaction of light with surfaces of granular and porous materials such as the regolith of asteroids. The most widely used model for interpreting photometric and spectroscopic data from asteroids and bodies in the solar system without an atmosphere is the Hapke model. In this work, we present a bibliographic review on the Hayabusa I mission and on the observations of the asteroid (25143) Itokawa obtained by terrestrial telescopes and by the space probe itself. In addition, we used archival data obtained by the spacecraft for a preliminary study of the applicability of photometric models to recover physical properties of the asteroid. The model we used was the Hapke model that takes into account the effect of shadow occultation, considering the porosity factor and the effects of macroscopic roughness.
