2019.A.2.2. LUMIO CubeSat: Toward a Lunar Situational Awareness

Author(s)

Francesco Topputo (1)

Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Session

A.2

Keywords

Lunar observation, Lunar CubeSats, Meteoroid impacts, Lunar Situatonal Awareness

Abstract

The Lunar Meteoroid Impact Observer (LUMIO) is a CubeSat mission to observe, quantify, and characterise the meteoroid impacts by detecting their flashes on the lunar far-side. This complements the knowledge gathered by Earth-based observations of the lunar nearside, thus synthesising a global information on the lunar meteoroid environment. LUMIO envisages a 12U CubeSat form-factor placed in a halo orbit at Earth-Moon L2 to characterise the lunar meteoroid flux by detecting the impact flashes produced on the far-side of the Moon. The mission employs the LUMIO-Cam, an optical instrument capable of detecting light flashes in the visible spectrum. LUMIO is one of the two winner of ESA’s LUCE (Lunar CubeSat for Exploration) SysNova competition, and as such it is being considered by ESA for implementation in the near future. An independent assessment of the mission has been performed by ESA’s CDF team.

In this talk, the latest results on the assessment of the scientific output of LUMIO will be shown, with a focus on how they will impact our existence knowledge of meteoroid models. An overview of the present-day LUMIO CubeSat design will be also given, with a focus on the latest developments.