Imaging the interior of a comet from bistatic microwave measurements: case of a scale comet model

Link to the publisher version: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117717307330; International audience; Imaging the internal structure of comets and asteroids is an important way to provide information about their formation process. In this paper, we investigate the possibility to image the interior of such structures with electromagnetic wave in the microwave domain (radar system) using an inverse algorithm adapted to take advantage of a bistatic configuration, taking into account the polarization effects, and which presents low memory requirement. To this end, a scale model of a comet/asteroid was built and was used for an experimental simulation. The scattered fields of this scale model were measured in a perfectly controlled environment, in an anechoic chamber, to avoid measurement disturbances and to focus this study only on which structural information can be obtained with such measurements. To profit from the spatial diversity of information, a vectorial-induced current reconstruction algorithm was used. Two configurations were tested and analyzed including one with very few measurements. From the qualitative reconstructed maps, we have shown that it is possible to detect the presence of a core in both cases.