Abstract: In order to impact the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3 for scientific exploration, the "deep space impacting mission" and the present state of the deep space impactor were presented, the Hayabusa-2 deep space impacting mission was reviewed in detail, the scientific objectives of the deep space impactor with regard to China′s plan for future deep space missions to near-Earth asteroids were given. Through the deep investigation and analysis of the Hayabusa-2 impactor, the whole technology system of the deep space impactor which is based on explosively-formed projectile was obtained; the detailed technical analysis and technical connotation of the explosively-formed projectile, the safe and reliable explosion, the impactor separation, the impacting simulation and some other aspects were given systematically. The preliminary design of the deep space impactor for the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3 was obtained. Through the impacting simulation, the results show that the diameters of impact craters vary from 32cm to 47cm with different impacting speed of 0.2cm/μs to 0.4cm/μs. The high resolution variation pattern of the diameter and depth of impact crater with different projectile thicknesses, impacting velocities, and projectile diameters were provided. This paper can provide technology support for the overall optimization of the deep space impactor.

Key words: asteroid material exploration, explosively-formed projectile, deep space exploration, impactor, impacting simulation