About ESA
The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Space in Member States
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
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Science & Exploration
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Enabling & Support
Making space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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M-Argo: ESA's asteroid-targeting CubeSat
When M-Argo launches, it will be the smallest spacecraft to traverse interplanetary space under its own power. The Miniaturised Asteroid Remote Geophysical Observer (M-Argo) CubeSat will rendezvous with an asteroid, then survey it using a multispectral camera and a laser altimeter. At just 34cm wide on its longest side, the miniature spacecraft contains numerous other technologies detailed in this video, including an electric propulsion system, a high frequency ‘X-band’ communications system and a flat panel ‘reflectarray’ antenna. This will enable the satellite to communicate with Earth even from 150 million km away.
M-Argo is a 12-unit CubeSat – with a 22 x 22 x 34 cm body – that would hitch a ride on the launch of a larger space mission whose trajectory takes it beyond Earth orbit, such as astronomy missions to a Sun–Earth Lagrange point. The CubeSat would then use its own miniaturised electric thruster to take it into deep space and rendezvous with an asteroid, which it would survey using a multispectral camera and a laser altimeter to look for resources such as hydrated minerals that could be extracted in future.
The low-cost nature of smaller spacecraft such as M-Argo paves the way for sending 10 to 20 such CubeSats to scout different asteroids, to perform a wide-scale survey of the near-Earth asteroid population – helping us get to know our neighbours better, both for science purposes and, ultimately, to identify in-situ resources for future exploitation. The mission is supported through the Fly element of the Agency’s General Support Technology Programme.
