LUMIO: achieving autonomous operations for Lunar exploration with a CubeSat

Abstract

The Lunar Meteoroid Impacts Observer (LUMIO) is one of the four projects selected within ESA's SysNova competition to develop a small satellite for scientific and technology demonstration purposes to be deployed by a mother ship around the Moon. The mission utilizes a 12U form-factor CubeSat which carries the LUMIO-Cam, an optical instrument capable of detecting light flashes in the visible spectrum to continuously monitor and process the meteoroids impacts. In this paper, we will describe the mission concept and focus on the performance of a novel navigation concept using Moon images taken as byproduct of the LUMIO-Cam operations. This new approach will considerably limit the operations burden on ground, aiming at autonomous orbit-attitude navigation and control. Furthermore, an efficient and autonomous strategy for collection, processing, categorization, and storage of