OPtical Imager for Comets (OPIC) for proposed F mission Comet Interceptor

Comet Interceptor is a proposed F-class mission to a dynamically new Solar System object. Enabled by recent advances in observational surveys which will cover the sky more deeply, coherently and rapidly, the spacecraft will be parked at the Sun–Earth Lagrange Point L2 waiting for a suitable target to be discovered. It will be a multi-element spacecraft comprising a primary platform which also acts as the communications hub, and sub-spacecraft, allowing multi-point observations around the target during a flyby. The B2 sub-spacecraft will carry OPtical Imager for Comets (OPIC) whose goal is mapping of the nucleus and its dust jets at visible and infrared wavelengths. Here we present the preliminary design and considerations. The instrument is named after an Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik who proposed a reservoir of comets which is now called the Öpik–Oort cloud, from where the Comet Interceptor target would originate.