Abstract: The lightcurve of an asteroid includes information such as shape and spin state. For the China asteroid exploration mission, it is necessary to obtain the a priori properties of the target through on orbit photometric observations. To meet this demand, we construct a lightcurve observation simulation system, which combines the photoelectric link based point source target simulator and computer graphics scene simulator. After getting simulation images, the target lightcurve is calculated, and then inversion is performed. After experiments, the inversion results of the simulated lightcurves are very close to the inverse results obtained from the real observation data, which can be used in the study of in orbit lightcurve observations of spacecraft. Finally, we analyze the influence of different lightcurve observing orbit for the 2016 HO3 detection mission, providing some ideas for the planning of spacecraft lightcurve observation tasks.

Key words: asteroid, lightcurve inversion, scenes simulation, deep space exploration