Document Type

Conference Paper

Journal/Book Title/Conference

The 4S Symposium 2014

Publisher

European Space Agency

Location

Majorca, Spain

Publication Date

5-26-2014

First Page

1

Last Page

21

Abstract

Significant advances in Earth, solar, and space physics over the next decades will originate from new, system-level observational techniques. The most promising technique to still be fully developed and exploited requires conducting multi-point or distributed constellation-based observations. This system-level observational approach is required to understand the “big picture” coupling between disparate regions such as the solar-wind, magnetosphere, ionosphere, upper atmosphere, land, and ocean. However, the costs to date of these and other similar proposed constellations have been prohibitive given the traditional “large satellite” architectures and the multiple launch vehicles required for implementing the constellations.

Financially sustainable development and deployment of multi-spacecraft constellations can only be achieved through the use of small spacecraft that allow for multiple hostings per launch vehicle. The revolution in commercial mobile and other battery-powered consumer technology has helped enable researchers in recent years to build and fly very small yet capable satellites, principally CubeSats. In this paper we will review a number of the small, low-cost sensor and instrumentation technologies that have been developed to date as part of the CubeSat movement and examine how these new CubeSat-based technologies are helping us do more with less.

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