Session
Session III: The Big Picture
Abstract
The ten centimeter cube Cubesat and the P-POD deployer, although not intended, has brought about a major change in space missions. When introduced in 1998 and first launched in 2003, the CubeSat originally proposed for the academic community along with the commercial miniaturization of the electronics has now been whole heartedly accepted by the space community. Along with many academic and scientific missions there is now a rapidly growing commercial community of unique applications.
With this acceptance though, the original intent for academic training has been greatly diminished due to the increased complexity of getting approval for launch and the cost of the launches. Some relief has been provided by the NASA ElaNa program, but this is still a complex and time consuming meeting and paperwork process that mostly benefits experience academic organizations or professional space industry.
What we propose with the Citizen Satellite is to take a step down in size, cost and complexity of a space mission for unexperienced academic community and the novice space enthusiast to get an experiment into space. As with the CubeSat originally, the reduction is size and the use of the P-POD provide a less expensive way to get secondary launches to space. Now the addition of the International Space Station low altitude launches eliminates the objection of long term space debris. This short orbit life, however, meets the needs of this new space community.
The Citizen Satellite is now based around a five centimeter cube. A deployer has been developed by Teton Sys that is the form factor of a 3U CubeSat called a PQ-POD that can use the standard P-POD. The small five centimeter cubes called PocketQubes are contained within the 3U CubeSat that has its own space mission bus. This bus then releases the PocketQubes at some time after the deployment from the P-POD. The present PQ-POD can hold sixteen five-centimeter PocketQubes (1p), or other combinations of 2p and 1p sizes. Our primary launch platform is the ISS so all will have a short orbit life.
The first PocketQubes were launch with the GAUSS Team UniSat in 2013 on a Russian Dnepr. These small femtosats costing less than $1,000 proved that off-the-shelf low-cost electronics can work for introductory space missions. Our hope is that these Citizen Satellite PocketQubes will encourage the novice space enthusiast to provide innovation for new and useful applications for space as the apps has done for the iPhone.
Citizen Satellite: A Way to have Low Cost Space Missions for the Unordinary Innovator
The ten centimeter cube Cubesat and the P-POD deployer, although not intended, has brought about a major change in space missions. When introduced in 1998 and first launched in 2003, the CubeSat originally proposed for the academic community along with the commercial miniaturization of the electronics has now been whole heartedly accepted by the space community. Along with many academic and scientific missions there is now a rapidly growing commercial community of unique applications.
With this acceptance though, the original intent for academic training has been greatly diminished due to the increased complexity of getting approval for launch and the cost of the launches. Some relief has been provided by the NASA ElaNa program, but this is still a complex and time consuming meeting and paperwork process that mostly benefits experience academic organizations or professional space industry.
What we propose with the Citizen Satellite is to take a step down in size, cost and complexity of a space mission for unexperienced academic community and the novice space enthusiast to get an experiment into space. As with the CubeSat originally, the reduction is size and the use of the P-POD provide a less expensive way to get secondary launches to space. Now the addition of the International Space Station low altitude launches eliminates the objection of long term space debris. This short orbit life, however, meets the needs of this new space community.
The Citizen Satellite is now based around a five centimeter cube. A deployer has been developed by Teton Sys that is the form factor of a 3U CubeSat called a PQ-POD that can use the standard P-POD. The small five centimeter cubes called PocketQubes are contained within the 3U CubeSat that has its own space mission bus. This bus then releases the PocketQubes at some time after the deployment from the P-POD. The present PQ-POD can hold sixteen five-centimeter PocketQubes (1p), or other combinations of 2p and 1p sizes. Our primary launch platform is the ISS so all will have a short orbit life.
The first PocketQubes were launch with the GAUSS Team UniSat in 2013 on a Russian Dnepr. These small femtosats costing less than $1,000 proved that off-the-shelf low-cost electronics can work for introductory space missions. Our hope is that these Citizen Satellite PocketQubes will encourage the novice space enthusiast to provide innovation for new and useful applications for space as the apps has done for the iPhone.
