Studying a NEA with the M-ARGO CubeSat
M-ARGO is a 12U CubeSat that will be one of the first CubeSats to rendezvous and study a NEA. In addition to needing to survive for three years in deep space, it will need to be highly autonomous in order to perform close observations of the target asteroid. Credit: ESA.
ESA and their partners are pushing CubeSats further than they’ve ever been before. The M-ARGO (Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer) mission is a 12U CubeSat (226x226x340 mm) that will be launched on a rideshare mission before using it’s own propulsion to visit a sub-100 meter wide asteroid. This mission will demonstrate a cost effective way to explore near-Earth asteroids (NEAs).
The M-ARGO design will use electric propulsion with sufficient propellant to access one of nearly 200 target NEAs. Future missions could include more propellant and improved communications instrumentation to access an even larger group. M-ARGO is currently being designed to survive at least three years of travel in deep space, a significant feat for a CubeSat. This mission serves to test advanced technologies useful for all other deep space operations.
There are many reasons why NEAs are ideal targets for exploration. Understanding their potential hazard to Earth helps inform planetary defense strategies. Characterizing their composition informs future resource utilization architectures, and allows greater understanding of protoplanetary evolution. M-ARGO is unique compared to prior asteroid rendezvous mission because it is targeting an asteroid less than 100 meters wide, which has not been done yet. This type of asteroid is expected to be a compact, fast spinning object with no surface regolith.
Two of the instruments M-ARGO may carry include a multispectral camera and laser altimeter. The multispectral camera will be useful for providing surface composition information, and the laser altimeter will provide data used to build a detailed topology map. Both instruments will provide much higher resolution data of the target asteroid than any remote sensing telescope could.
Use of autonomous operation will allow M-ARGO to make close observations of the target asteroid, despite having significant transmission delays due to being up to 150 million kilometers away from Earth. Communication over these vast distances will utilize a high frequency X-band flat antenna system. A similar system was successfully demonstrated in 2019 by the MarCO CubeSat, which proved CubeSats could communicate with Earth from distances as far as Mars.
The M-ARGO mission is being designed by GomSpace’s Luxembourg subsidiary and Politecnico di Milano from Italy. In 2019 GomSpace signed a 400k Euro contract for Phase A design, which should be completed around April 2020. With sufficient funding to carry the mission from design to implementation, launch of M-ARGO could occur as early as 2023. The mission design team has narrowed their selection to one of five possible asteroid targets, considering a 2023-2025 launch window.
This mission promises to bring cost reductions to deep space mission, and demonstrate technologies that enable significant mass reductions for future deep space missions. One of the largest hurdles to space resource utilization is characterizing a resource well enough to verify its characteristics and composition, something in-situ missions like M-ARGO delivers. Lower cost missions like M-ARGO will lead to a wider base of knowledge, reducing financial risk, and allowing profitable business cases to close.
Learn more about M-ARGO here
