Using the study objectives from the committee’s statement of task (provided in Appendix A), the specific actions to the committee are listed below. ThisĪssessment focuses on the platform’s promise to obtain high-priority science data, as defined in recent decadal surveys 1 in astronomy and astrophysics, 2 Earth science and applications from space, 3 planetary science, 4 and solar and space physics (heliophysics) 5 the science priorities identified in the 2014 NASA Science Plan and the potential for CubeSats to advance biology and microgravity research. This committee, under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and called for by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Science Foundation (NSF), was charged to review the current state of the scientific potential and technological promise of CubeSats. RATIONALE FOR THE CREATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON ACHIEVING SCIENCE GOALS WITH CUBESATS (d) Courtesy of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. (c) Courtesy of the Planetary Systems Corporation.
Summers et al., ed.), American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C., doi:10.1029/2012GM001313, copyright 2013 John Wiley and Sons. 385-404 in Dynamics of the Earth’s Radiation Belts and Inner Magnetosphere, Geophysical Monograph Series, Vol. Cooper, 2012, Colorado student space weather experiment: Differential flux measurements of energetic particles in a highly inclined low Earth orbit, pp. SOURCE: (a) Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech. (d) The NASA-sponsored Iodine Satellite (iSAT) is a 12U technology demonstration mission to mature new propulsion technologies. (c) Containerized deployment systems, 6U shown, enable launch integration and access to space. (b) The NSF-sponsored CSSWE 3U CubeSat designed to measure solar energetic protons and Earth’s radiation belt electrons. The first science results from such CubeSats have only recently become available however, questions remain regarding the scientific potential and technological promise of CubeSats in the future.įor the purpose of this study, the committee defines a CubeSat as a spacecraft sized in units, or U’s, typically up to 12U (a unit is defined as a volume of about 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm) that is launched fully enclosed in a container, enabling ease of launch vehicle system integration, thus easing access to space.įIGURE 1.1 CubeSat examples: (a) NASA-sponsored MCubed and IPEX 1U onboard flight processing technology demonstration CubeSats (10 cm on a side). space science community, which sees this platform, despite its inherent constraints, as a way to affordably access space and perform unique measurements of scientific value. In particular, CubeSats have caught the attention of parts of the U.S. Yet, their use has rapidly spread within academia, industry, and government agencies both nationally and internationally (see Figure 1.1 for examples of CubeSats). Within the category of small satellites, CubeSats have emerged as a space-platform defined in terms of (10 cm) 3-sized units of approximately 1.3 kg each called “U’s.” Historically, CubeSats were developed as training projects to expose students to the challenges of real-world engineering practices and system design. Although these kinds of ever-more-sophisticated missions will continue into the future, small satellites ranging in mass between 500 kg to 0.1 kg-from microsatellites (10 kg-100 kg), nanosatellites (1-10 kg), and even picosatellites (0.1-1 kg)-are gaining momentum as an additional means to address targeted science questions in a rapid, and possibly more affordable, manner. During past decades, driven by increasingly advanced science questions, space observatories have become more sophisticated and more complex, with costs often growing to billions of dollars.
Space-based observations have transformed our understanding of Earth, its environment, the solar system, and the universe at large.
0 kommentar(er)
