Cubesats are changing the way we explore the solar systemby Mustafa Aksoy
|
| Cubesats are cheaper to develop and test. The savings of time and money means more frequent and diverse missions along with less risk. |
As a professor of electrical and computer engineering who works with new space technologies, I can tell you that cubesats are a simpler and far less costly way to reach other worlds.
Rather than carry many instruments with a vast array of purposes, these Lilliputian-size satellites typically focus on a single, specific scientific goal, whether discovering exoplanets or measuring the size of an asteroid. They are affordable throughout the space community, even to small startup, private companies and university laboratories.
Tiny satellites, big advantages
The advantages of cubesats over larger satellites are significant. Cubesats are cheaper to develop and test. The savings of time and money means more frequent and diverse missions along with less risk. That alone increases the pace of discovery and space exploration.
Cubesats don’t travel under their own power. Instead, they hitch a ride; they become part of the payload of a larger spacecraft. Stuffed into containers, they’re ejected into space by a spring mechanism attached to their dispensers. Once in space, they power on. Cubesats usually conclude their missions by burning up as they enter the atmosphere after their orbits slowly decay.
Case in point: A team of students at Brown University built a cubesat in under 18 months for less than $10,000. The satellite, about the size of a loaf of bread and developed to study the growing problem of space debris, was deployed off a SpaceX rocket in May 2022.
Smaller size, single purpose
Sending a satellite into space is nothing new, of course. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit back in 1957. Today, about 10,000 active satellites are out there, and nearly all are engaged in communications, navigation, defense, technology development, or Earth studies. Only a few—less than 3%—are exploring space.
That is now changing. Satellites large and small are rapidly becoming the backbone of space research. These spacecraft can now travel long distances to study planets and stars, places where human missions or robot landings are costly, risky, or simply impossible with the current technology.
| Deploying them in batches, or constellations, means multiple devices can make observations of the same phenomena. |
But the cost of building and launching traditional satellites is considerable. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2009, is roughly the size of a minivan and cost close to $600 million. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, with a wingspan the length of a school bus, cost more than $700 million. The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, an 1,800-kilogram probe designed to study the Sun, cost $1.5 billion. And Europa Clipper, the length of a basketball court and scheduled to launch this month to Jupiter’s moon Europa, will ultimately cost $5 billion.
These satellites, relatively large and stunningly complex, are vulnerable to potential failures, a not uncommon occurrence. In the blink of an eye, years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars could be lost in space.
Exploring the Moon, Mars and the Milky Way
Because they are so small, cubesats can be released in large numbers in a single launch, further reducing costs. Deploying them in batches, or constellations, means multiple devices can make observations of the same phenomena.
For example, as part of the Artemis 1 mission in November 2022, NASA launched 10 cubesats. The satellites had varied missions, including to detect and map water on the Moon. These findings are crucial, not only for the upcoming Artemis missions but to the quest to sustain a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. The cubesats cost $13 million.
The two MarCO cubesats accompanied NASA’s InSight lander to Mars in 2018. They served as a real-time communications relay back to Earth during InSight’s entry, descent, and landing on the Martian surface. As a bonus, they captured pictures of the planet with wide-angle cameras. They cost about $20 million.
Cubesats have also studied nearby stars and exoplanets. In 2017, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory deployed ASTERIA, a CubeSat that observed 55 Cancri e, also known as Janssen, an exoplanet eight times larger than Earth, orbiting a star 41 light years away from us. In reconfirming the existence of that faraway world, ASTERIA became the smallest space instrument ever to detect an exoplanet.
Two more notable cubest space missions are on the way: Hera, which launched October 7, will deploy ESA’s first deep-space cubesats to visit the Didymos asteroid system, following up on NASA’s DART asteroid impact mission there two years ago.
And the M-Argo satellite, with a launch planned for 2025, will study the shape, mass and surface minerals of a soon-to-be-named asteroid. The size of a suitcase, M-Argo will be the smallest cubesat to perform its own independent mission in interplanetary space.
The swift progress and substantial investments already made in CubeSat missions could help make humans a multiplanetary species. But that journey will be a long one, and depends on the next generation of scientists to develop this dream.
Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.