EagleCam: a 1.5U Low-Cost CubeSat Mission for a Novel Third-Person View of a Lunar Landing

Ahead of the United States' Artemis crewed mission returning to the moon in 2024, Intuitive Machines, under the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract will land their Nova-C lunar lander in early 2023. When this lunar lander reaches an altitude of 30 meters over the lunar surface during the terminal descent, EagleCam will be deployed. This Cube-Sat will capture, and transmit via WiFi, the first-ever, third-person images of a commercial spacecraft performing a lunar landing. This paper will illustrate the CubeSat design, avionics selection, and testing for different off-the-shelf and space-rated components, with a special focus on the science obtained by the different sensors.