CubeSats – Have They Reached Their Explorer-1 Moment?

Anthony Freeman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology

Abstract

The launch of Explorer-1 in February 1958 heralded the dawn of the space age in the US. It was an appropriate response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik mission, launched the previous year, in that it was a true mission of science exploration, part of the US contribution to the International Geophysical year, leading to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts that gird the Earth. Thirteen years later, Apollo astronauts had walked on the Moon several times, the US had a system of satellites in place to monitor weather, probes had flown by Mars and Venus providing the first close-up views of our sister planets, a probe was measuring the solar wind for the first time, and the first Landsat spacecraft was on its way to the launch pad. This incredible burst of creativity and innovation was sparked by the launch of a satellite with 14 kg mass, built in just 84 days by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This paper will put forward the argument that cubesats are at or have passed their ‘Explorer-1 moment’. Missions like the University of Michigan’s Radio Aurora Explorer, MIT/Draper labs’ Exoplanetsat, JPL’s CHARM mission, are all recognizably science-driven missions, designed to return valuable science data for heliophysics, astrophysics and Earth Science. Rob Staehle at JPL has proposed interplanetary cubesats, and others have suggested cubesats at Mars could yield unique science data. It’s now possible to imagine a future – about 13 years hence, in which constellations of cubesats are integral to observations of the Earth system and climate change, dozens of cubesats are out beyond Earth orbit, helping to access the hidden corners of our solar system, monitor the Sun, and explore the Universe. This talk will describe some of the efforts under way at the JPL to help enable this future. The research described in this paper was carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

 
Aug 10th, 10:35 AM

CubeSats – Have They Reached Their Explorer-1 Moment?

The launch of Explorer-1 in February 1958 heralded the dawn of the space age in the US. It was an appropriate response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik mission, launched the previous year, in that it was a true mission of science exploration, part of the US contribution to the International Geophysical year, leading to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts that gird the Earth. Thirteen years later, Apollo astronauts had walked on the Moon several times, the US had a system of satellites in place to monitor weather, probes had flown by Mars and Venus providing the first close-up views of our sister planets, a probe was measuring the solar wind for the first time, and the first Landsat spacecraft was on its way to the launch pad. This incredible burst of creativity and innovation was sparked by the launch of a satellite with 14 kg mass, built in just 84 days by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This paper will put forward the argument that cubesats are at or have passed their ‘Explorer-1 moment’. Missions like the University of Michigan’s Radio Aurora Explorer, MIT/Draper labs’ Exoplanetsat, JPL’s CHARM mission, are all recognizably science-driven missions, designed to return valuable science data for heliophysics, astrophysics and Earth Science. Rob Staehle at JPL has proposed interplanetary cubesats, and others have suggested cubesats at Mars could yield unique science data. It’s now possible to imagine a future – about 13 years hence, in which constellations of cubesats are integral to observations of the Earth system and climate change, dozens of cubesats are out beyond Earth orbit, helping to access the hidden corners of our solar system, monitor the Sun, and explore the Universe. This talk will describe some of the efforts under way at the JPL to help enable this future. The research described in this paper was carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.