Deep-Space Optical Navigation for M-ARGO Mission

Abstract The Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer (M-ARGO) mission is designed to be ESA’s first stand-alone CubeSat to independently travel in deep space with its own electric propulsion and direct-to-Earth communication systems in order to rendezvous with a near-Earth asteroid. Deep-space Cubesats are appealing owing to the scaled mission costs. However, the operational costs are comparable to those of traditional missions if ground-based orbit determination is employed. Thus, autonomous navigation methods are required to favour an overall scaling of the mission cost for deep-space CubeSats. M-ARGO is assumed to perform an autonomous navigation experiment during the deep-space cruise phase. This paper elaborates on the deep-space navigation experiment exploiting the line-of-sight directions to visible beacons in the Solar System. The aim is to assess the experiment feasibility and to quantify the performances of the method. Results indicate feasibility of the autonomous navigation for M-ARGO with a 3σ accuracy in the order of 1000 km for the position components and 1 m/s for the velocity components in good observation conditions, utilising miniaturized optical sensors.