An optical navigation filter simulator for a CubeSat mission to Didymos binary asteroid system

AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment), is a joint NASA-ESA mission that will operate within 65803 Didymos binary system and whose main purpose is to experiment and investigate the kinetic impact technique for the deviation of the asteroid trajectories in space. HERA, the "mother" satellite designed by ESA, will aim to collect data about the chemical-physical composition of the binary system and about the characteristics of the impact between DART, the bullet-satellite realized and run by NASA, and the minor of the two celestial bodies that compose Didymos, which should occur around October 2022. HERA satellite will carry high-level technology onboard, including some CubeSats. This panorama also includes the DustCube mission, a project proposal for a CubeSat, whose main objective is to assist HERA in the acquisition of data. This thesis, as part of the DustCube project, aims at investigating the autonomous navigation of the CubeSat within the Didymos system, in particular through the development of a navigation filter based on optical observables. By making use of images gathered by a couple of infrared cameras, both LoS and range measurements are retrieved and fed to an Extended Kalman Filter. Results show that, even if implementing a reduced dynamical model within the filter, the expected position accuracy is below the requested 10 meters.