CubeSat mission for the observation of meteoroid impacts on Moon

Recent progress in nanosatellite technologies allows to consider innovative new CubeSat missions for scientific purposes. We present and evaluate the design of a small and cost effective CubeSat mission to monitor lunar meteoroid impacts by detecting their optical flashes. The poster summarizes the results of a comprehensive survey of past and recent ground based and satellite based projects focussing on lunar impact monitoring and discusses important aspects of the proposed mission and various alternatives for their solutions. Several spacecraft orbits around Moon and their usefulness for lunar impact observation are studied. In addition, we discuss the environmental risks and challenges, which such spacecraft needs to face, mainly thermal management and radiation tolerance. Finally, we present and discuss the design an optical camera suitable to detect meteoroid impacts on the lunar surface.