The Scientific Operations of Milani NavCam

Milani is one of the two 6U CubeSats on board the Hera spacecraft, a mission by the European Space Agency planned to rendezvous with the Didymos asteroid system in late 2026. The CubeSat will contribute to the scientific objectives of Hera, providing complementary observation geometries and close approaches to the asteroids. The large imaging dataset provided by Milani’s Navigation Camera (NavCam) will contribute to measure global properties of the binary system and to characterize the asteroids’ surfaces, within a spectral range between 400-700 nm. Both the spectral range and observation geometry are complementary to other imaging instruments on board Milani and Hera. In addition, the NavCam will be instrumental to the AutoNav experiment, the main technological objective of Milani.