Davide Perna, INAF
As part of the ALCOR program, the Italian Space Agency (ASI) has funded the “Asteroid Nodal Intersection Multiple Encounters (ANIME)” CubeSat mission, which successfully completed Phase A in 2024. ANIME is a 12U CubeSat designed to explore multiple near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) during their transits through orbital nodes. The mission’s baseline profile includes flybys of two Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) and a rendezvous with a small NEA measuring in the tens of meters. ANIME’s payload features two cameras and a transponder for radio science. The mission aims to advance planetary formation studies, support planetary defense, and assess asteroid resource utilization while validating critical CubeSat technologies for deep-space applications. Phase A study results will be presented.