Measuring the elemental composition of asteroids with a Compton telescope

Element composition of Solar system objects can be studied with remote spectroscopy. We evaluate gamma-ray spectroscopy in the Compton regime to analyse the surface composition of an asteroid. We simulate one month of observation of a near-Earth asteroid from an orbiting satellite. We analyse characteristic lines coming from the Fe and Si to evalutate elemental abundances in the target. We compare the performances of three different instruments: a Compton tracking camera, a Compton non-tracking camera and a simple scintillator system. All the three detectors reveal the presence of Fe and Si, but with different sensitivity. Rare precious metals in the Pt family, instead, cannot be detected by our instruments.