Target Selection for M-ARGO Interplanetary CubeSat

The Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer (M-ARGO) is planned to be the first standalone CubeSat mission to rendezvous with and characterise a near-Earth asteroid for the presence of in-situ resources. Beside carrying out the scientific tasks, M-ARGO is a tremendous demonstrator of miniaturised deep-space technologies currently under development in the ESA Technology Programme. The M-ARGO mission concept was originally conceived by ESA's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) team in 2017. The Phase A project was led by GomSpace Luxembourg and supported by Politecnico di Milano in 2019-2020, under ESA GSTP contract. This work presents the initial results for what concerns the mission analysis and design of M-ARGO. In particular, we show the original procedure developed to assess the reachable NEO targets and the subsequent down-selection process. An in-house indirect solver, the Low-Thrust Trajectory Optimiser (LT2.0), has been used in combination with a realistic thruster model, featuring variable input power, thrust, and specific impulse. The solver implements an accurate switching detection technique along with analytic derivatives. Hundreds of both time- and fuel-optimal problems have been solved, aiming at near-Earth asteroids properly filtered from the Minor Planet Center Database. The analyses show that approximately 150 minor bodies are found potentially reachable by M-ARGO when departing from Sun-Earth L2 within a 3-year transfer duration. Out of these, 41 targets have been down-selected, and a short list of the 5 most promising objects has been extracted. Our preliminary results indicate mission feasibility. Overall, M-ARGO has the potential to enable a completely new class of low-cost, deep space exploration missions.