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M. Pajola et al., On 2022 September 26, the DART spacecraft will impact the surface of Dimorphos, the ∼160 m size satellite of the binary near-Earth asteroid (NEA) (65803) Didymos. What will be observed on the surfaces of both asteroids and at the DART impact site is largely unknown, beyond the details of Didymos revealed by previous Arecibo and Goldstone radar observations. We present here the expected DART and LICIACube observations of the Didymos system and discuss the planned mapping strategies. By searching similar geological features and processes identified on other NEAs, we constrain the impact conditions that DART might encounter at Dimorphos, assessing both the asteroid's surface and interior structure., This work was supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) within the LICIACube project (ASI-INAF agreement AC n. 2019-31-HH.0). This work was supported by the DART mission, NASA Contract No. 80MSFC20D0004. E.A. is funded by the University of Arizona. S.S. acknowledges support from NASA as part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Participating Scientist Program. J.M.T.-R. is funded by the research project (PGC2018-097374-B-I00), funded by FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación—Agencia Estatal de Investigación. P.M. acknowledges ESA as well as funding from the French space agency CNES, from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 870377 (project NEO-MAPP) and from the CNRS through the MITI interdisciplinary programs.

o The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will be the first historical test to check an asteroid deflection by a kinetic impactor. o The target of DART mission is Dimorphos, the secondary element of the (65803) Didymos binary asteroid system, and the impact is expected in late September - early October 2022 o The DART spacecraft will carry a 6U cubesat called LICIACube (Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroid), provided by the Italian Space Agency and developed by Argotec, with the aim to collect pictures of the impact's effects. o On board LICIAcube two camera payloads will be hosted: LEIA, a panchromatic (400-900nm Filter, FoV equal to ±2.06°) Narrow Angle Camera and LUKE, a RGB (Bayer colour filter, FoV equal to ±5°) Camera. o LICIACube will be able to acquire the structure and evolution of the DART impact ejecta plume and will obtain high-resolution images and 2 colours data (B-G, G-R) of the surfaces of both bodies and the plume.

On September 30, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will be the first space mission demonstrating the kinetic impactor method for planetary defense. DART will impact Didy- mos B (a 164±18 m secondary of asteroid (65803) Did- ymos) with its mass of 650 kg and at a speed of 6.6 km/s. Such impact is expected to change the secondary orbital period by about 10 minutes. DART will carry as a piggyback the Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube) which will be released from DART ten days before the impact. LICIACube will pro- vide evidence of the impact and will take multiple im- ages of the target up to a distance of ~55 km from the target. The LICIACube narrow and wide angle cameras - LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid) and LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer), respec- tively - will capture the post-impact processes coming from in situ events, such as the newly formed crater, the expanding ejecta and the dynamics of its plume. In par- ticular, the measurement of the motion of the slow (

CubeSats were born to be a cheap alternative for relatively short low Earth-orbiting missions. The extensive tests on field have proven that CubeSats are capable to conduct also deep-space missions,even though with lower performances depending on off-the-shelf payloads. The idea of coupling one or more CubeSats to support a classical deep space probe could be useful to reduce the mission costs while increasing the scientific objectives. For instance, CubeSats could be used to split mission tasks, to perform gravity investigations using formation flight (Hera-Juventas), or dedicated optical observation (LICIACube, ArgoMoon). The costs could be additionally reduced by releasing the CubeSats once reached the investigation situ. However, CubeSats' payload and onboard computation limits, smaller non-directional antennas set a tricky challenge to the Orbit Determination (OD) and Navigation (NAV) tasks. SLS. Recently, the Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission has demonstrated the capabilities of the CubeSats in deep- space environment. In the following, we will present the challenges in the navigation of two deep-space CubeSats, coordinated by the Italian Space Agency (ASI): LICIACube and ArgoMoon. Both the spacecrafts are designed, manufactured, and tested by the Italian company Argotec that will also operate the spacecrafts.

More than 85% of the 18,000 NEOs discovered up to now lack a physical characterization. The situation is even more dramatic for the small NEO population (D < 300 m). We conducted photometric observations for a large collection of uncharacterized NEOs in order to design future space missions towards them and assess the consequences of a possible impact on Earth. We discovered that carbonaceous C-complex NEOs deserve particular attention, since they are sometimes located in orbits that are challenging from a mitigation point of view, but also because the lack of carbonaceous material might not be due to an observational bias alone.

In the last decades Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) have become very important targets to study, since they can give us clues to the formation, evolution and composition of the Solar System. In addition, they may represent either a threat to humankind, or a repository of extraterrestrial resources for suitable space-borne missions. Within this framework, the choice of next-generation mission targets and the characterisation of a potential threat to our planet deserve special attention. To date, only a small part of the 11,000 discovered NEOs have been physically characterised. From ground and space-based observations one can determine some basic physical properties of these objects using visible and infrared spectroscopy. We present data for 13 objects observed with different telescopes around the world (NASA-IRTF, ESO-NTT, TNG) in the 0.4 - 2.5 um spectral range, within the NEOSURFACE survey (http://www.oa-roma.inaf.it/planet/NEOSurface.html). Objects are chosen from among the more accessible for a rendez-vous mission. All of them are characterised by a delta-V (the change in velocity needed for transferring a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit to rendez-vous with NEOs) lower than 10.5 km/s, well below the Solar System escape velocity (12.3 km/s). We taxonomically classify 9 of these objects for the first time. 11 objects belong to the S-complex taxonomy; the other 2 belong to the C-complex. We constrain the surface composition of these objects by comparing their spectra with meteorites from the RELAB database. We also compute olivine and pyroxene mineralogy for asteroids with a clear evidence of pyroxene bands. Mineralogy confirms the similarity with the already found H, L or LL ordinary chondrite analogues., 9 pages, 7 figures, to be published in A&A Minor changes by language editor