An analytical approach to autonomous optical navigation for a CubeSat mission to a binary asteroid system

We consider the autonomous optical navigation problem for a CubeSat mission to a binary asteroid system. We aimed at providing an approach which limits the computational burden, as to be suitable for real time on-board implementation. To this end, we formulate a theoretical framework which makes use of analytical results for the position determination from imaged ellipsoid targets. To assess the performance of the proposed approach, a simulation environment is developed, taking as a scenario the navigation to a triangular lagrangian point of Didymos system, and having as a target 10m rms position accuracy. Alternative formulations of the position fixing are evaluated and compared. Results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach to meet the target position determination accuracy.