Session
Weekday Session 1: Year in Review
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
Transported onboard NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (in short, DART) spacecraft developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (in short, LICIACube) played a crucial role in the homonymous mission that took place in September 2022. Its main purpose has been to document the effects of the intentional impact of DART probe with Dimorphos, the minor-planet moon of the 65803 Didymos asteroid system. Along this first-ever planetary defense mission against Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), LICIACube successfully completed the first-ever asteroid fly-by performed by a CubeSat.
With a maximum Earth distance of approximately 14 million km during its operative phase, LICIACube is currently one of the nanosatellites that operated the farthest from our planet in a robotic exploration mission. Once separated from DART, the micro-satellite followed its mothercraft along its approach trajectory: its optical system, composed by two digital cameras, is the core of the Autonomous Attitude Control System which allowed to gather images of the two asteroids during a very fast fly-by. This paper discusses how LICIACube behaved in flight, with a focus on the embedded real-time hardware-accelerated imaging capabilities and the Autonomous Attitude Control System as a whole. These technologies allowed the CubeSat to simultaneously operate its two optical payloads both for tracking and science purposes. During the approximately 5-minute-long fly-by, tracking has been performed using the primary telescopic grayscale camera (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid, LEIA) to provide rapid feedback to the satellite Autonomous Attitude Control System controlling its attitude, thus maintaining the pointing towards the target. The telescope was exploited to track the main body (Didymos) during the initial phases of the fly-by, switching then to Dimorphos in the vicinity of the closest approach, which occurred with a distance of about 50km and a relative speed of approximately 7 km/s. On the other hand, the secondary payload allowed to capture and store wide-angle images of DART impact with the asteroid, by means of the secondary RGB camera (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer, LUKE) and with a maximum image acquisition rate of 3 pictures per second.
In the first section of this paper, the LICIACube CubeSat System is introduced in the DART mission context. In second place, Argotec's all-in-house HAWK-6 platform upon which LICIACube was built is discussed in detail. Followingly, LICIACube in-flight performances are examined with a focus on the Autonomous Attitude Control System. Mission results are included, with real-time telemetry data collected during operations and images of DART captured before and after the impact with Dimorphos.
The First-Ever Asteroid Fly-By Performed by a CubeSat: Outcomes of the LICIACube Mission
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Transported onboard NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (in short, DART) spacecraft developed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Italian Space Agency (ASI) Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (in short, LICIACube) played a crucial role in the homonymous mission that took place in September 2022. Its main purpose has been to document the effects of the intentional impact of DART probe with Dimorphos, the minor-planet moon of the 65803 Didymos asteroid system. Along this first-ever planetary defense mission against Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), LICIACube successfully completed the first-ever asteroid fly-by performed by a CubeSat.
With a maximum Earth distance of approximately 14 million km during its operative phase, LICIACube is currently one of the nanosatellites that operated the farthest from our planet in a robotic exploration mission. Once separated from DART, the micro-satellite followed its mothercraft along its approach trajectory: its optical system, composed by two digital cameras, is the core of the Autonomous Attitude Control System which allowed to gather images of the two asteroids during a very fast fly-by. This paper discusses how LICIACube behaved in flight, with a focus on the embedded real-time hardware-accelerated imaging capabilities and the Autonomous Attitude Control System as a whole. These technologies allowed the CubeSat to simultaneously operate its two optical payloads both for tracking and science purposes. During the approximately 5-minute-long fly-by, tracking has been performed using the primary telescopic grayscale camera (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid, LEIA) to provide rapid feedback to the satellite Autonomous Attitude Control System controlling its attitude, thus maintaining the pointing towards the target. The telescope was exploited to track the main body (Didymos) during the initial phases of the fly-by, switching then to Dimorphos in the vicinity of the closest approach, which occurred with a distance of about 50km and a relative speed of approximately 7 km/s. On the other hand, the secondary payload allowed to capture and store wide-angle images of DART impact with the asteroid, by means of the secondary RGB camera (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer, LUKE) and with a maximum image acquisition rate of 3 pictures per second.
In the first section of this paper, the LICIACube CubeSat System is introduced in the DART mission context. In second place, Argotec's all-in-house HAWK-6 platform upon which LICIACube was built is discussed in detail. Followingly, LICIACube in-flight performances are examined with a focus on the Autonomous Attitude Control System. Mission results are included, with real-time telemetry data collected during operations and images of DART captured before and after the impact with Dimorphos.
