Abstract In 2021, the DART spacecraft will be launched by NASA to intercept the binary system Didymos and impact the moonlet (Dimorphos), to test the effectiveness of kinetic impactors for the deviation of hazardous asteroids’ trajectories. The impact is expected to generate a cloud of particles, whose study could provide valuable data about asteroid’s properties and impact models. Observations from ground to characterize ejecta and plume evolution after impact would be possible, but the resulting quality would be significantly lower than a short-range imaging. In this framework, ASI (Italian Space Agency) and NASA started a collaboration to embark on the US DART vehicle the LICIA (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroid) 6U CubeSat as a piggyback payload. LICIA is devoted to grasp science data by imaging the ejecta plume after the impact, and observe Dimorphos surface while flying by the binary system. The Italian consortium involved in the mission sees ARGOTEC for the platform development, and INAF, Politecnico di Milano and Universita di Bologna to cover the mission science, trajectory design and orbit de-termination tasks, respectively. The paper focuses on the mission analysis and maneuvers design, strongly driven by the science return, under the tight constraints enforced by the platform. In particular, it describes the preliminary procedure followed to derive trajectory constraints and to select the best option for the flyby. Despite the mission is still under development, and subjected to frequent updates of several parameters, the final performances derived in this paper maintain their validity as they represent the desired target values for the mission.

中文翻译：

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LICIA Cubesat 轨迹设计中的挑战以支持 DART 任务科学

摘要 2021年，NASA将发射DART航天器拦截双星系统Didymos并撞击小卫星（Dimorphos），以测试动能撞击器对危险小行星轨迹偏离的有效性。预计撞击将产生一团粒子云，其研究可以提供有关小行星特性和撞击模型的宝贵数据。从地面观测以表征撞击后的喷射物和羽流演化是可能的，但由此产生的质量将明显低于短程成像。在此框架内，ASI（意大利航天局）和 NASA 开始合作，以搭载美国 DART 飞行器 LICIA（用于小行星成像的轻型意大利立方体卫星）6U 立方体卫星作为搭载有效载荷。LICIA 致力于通过对撞击后喷射物羽流进行成像来掌握科学数据，并在双星系统飞行时观察 Dimorphos 表面。参与该任务的意大利财团将 ARGOTEC 用于平台开发，INAF、米兰理工大学和博洛尼亚大学分别负责任务科学、轨迹设计和轨道确定任务。该论文侧重于在平台强制执行的严格约束下，受科学回报强烈驱动的任务分析和机动设计。特别是，它描述了推导轨迹约束和为飞越选择最佳选项所遵循的初步程序。尽管该任务仍在开发中，并且需要频繁更新多个参数，但本文得出的最终性能仍保持其有效性，因为它们代表了任务所需的目标值。