Towards Asteroid Tomography: Modellings and Measurements Using an Analogue Model

The interior structures of the comets and asteroids, still poorly known, might hold a unique key to understand the early Solar System. Considering the interaction of an illuminated electromagnetic wave with this kind of targets, these ”objects” are very large compared to the applicable wavelength. Consequently, tomographic imaging of such targets, i.e., reconstructing their interior structure via multiple measurements, constitutes a challenging inverse problem. To reach this objective and to develop and test inverse algorithms, we need to investigate electromagnetic fields that have interacted with structures analogous to real asteroids and comets. In this study, we focus on the acquisition of these fields considering three methods: calculated fields obtained with (1) time and (2) frequency domain methods and (3) microwave measurements performed for an analogue model, i.e., a small-scale asteroid model.