NASA Will use a Cubesat to Test Gateway Station's Orbit

NASA hopes to put humans back on the moon by 2024, starting with an orbiting space station dubbed Lunar Gateway. And the space agency is already showing signs of prepping for the upcoming missions. Recently, the organization announced it will partner with Advance Space, an aerospace company from Colorado, to develop a small CubeSat mission to answer questions before the upcoming missions.

The CubeSat, named CAPSTONE, will be a tiny satellite with the same orbital path that Gateway could eventually take. This path will rotate together with the moon as it orbits Earth, brining it as close to the moon’s surface as 1,000 miles. CAPSTONE could launch as early as December 2020, and with it, could demonstrate how to enter and operate in this lunar orbit before the much larger spacecraft for Gateway are ready.

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The Cubesat Packed Super Strypi Rocket Failed During the ORS-4 Mission Attempt

An experimental rocket for small satellites took off from Hawaii on its debut mission at about 5:45 p.m. local time Nov. 3, roared toward the sky and then failed less than a minute into flight, the U.S. Air Force said.

The debut of the rail-launched Super Strypi rocket was the key feature of the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS)-4 mission, which carried 13 experimental satellites.

“The ORS-4 mission on an experimental Super Strypi launch vehicle failed in mid-flight after liftoff at 5:45 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time (7:45 p.m. PST/10:45 p.m. EST) today from the Pacific Missile Range Facility off Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii,” the Air Force said in a brief statement early Nov. 4. “Additional information will be released as it becomes available.”

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MarCO: The First Interplanetary Cubesats

We have moved closer to having a new tool set to explore the planets. For several years, scientists and engineers have talked about using tiny spacecraft, known as CubeSats, for interplanetary missions. However, a number of daunting engineering challenges have stood between these ideas and reality. A pioneering mission was needed that would take on those challenges and prove the technologies.

Recently, NASA announced the Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission that will fly two CubeSat spacecraft past Mars as part of its larger InSight Mars mission. While the MarCO spacecraft will fulfill a specific role in the InSight mission, their real importance likely will be to prove that these tiny spacecraft can be used for deep space missions.

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Obviously, the follow-on ought to be called POLO.  

A Step to a Satellite Based Panopticon

A CubeQuest Challenge: Cubesats to the Moon & Beyond

Registration now is open for NASA’s Cube Quest Challenge, the agency’s first in-space competition that offers the agency’s largest-ever prize purse.

Competitors have a shot at a share of $5 million in prize money and an opportunity to participate in space exploration and technology development, to include a chance at flying their very own CubeSat to the moon and beyond as secondary payload on the first integrated flight of NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

“NASA’s Cube Quest Challenge will engage teams in the development of the new technologies that will advance the state of the art of CubeSats and demonstrate their capabilities as viable deep space explorers,” said Michael Gazarik, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Prize competitions like this engage the general public and directly contribute to NASA’s goals while serving as a tool for open innovation.”

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CalTech Proposes Cubesats and Chipsat Space Probes

Last month, the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) at the California Institute of Technology released a report titled, “Small Satellites: A Revolution in Space Science,” which examines the sorts of missions types of missions that could be with rapidly evolving small satellites. The potential missions described in the report cover planetary science (moons, asteroids, etc.), astrophysics and heliophysics.

The planetary science missions include the use of mother ships that would deploy CubeSats and impactors to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa, tens of thousands of ChipSats to characterize Saturn’s rings, landing vehicles to explore asteroids, and small spacecraft that would map the moon’s interior and search for volatiles and organics.

The report says that a number of the missions are years away because new technologies for small satellites will need to be developed first. The document includes five recommendations for how NASA can go forward on developing the technologies and pursuing the missions.

NASA is already pursuing deep-space CubeSat missions, including a series that will be launched as secondary payloads in the first flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) in 2007. In May, the space agency also announced the selection of nine Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I awards to fund deep-space CubeSat technologies. NASA also has funded Draper Laboratory to develop a satellite to deploy ChipSats to explore surface of Europa.

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Bitcoin Block Chain Sats Being Studied by Deep Space Industries for the Bitsat Project

BitCoins took one small step towards space today as Jeff Garzik's Dunvegan Space Systems and Deep Space Industries Inc. announced a preliminary design contract to develop an orbital system for the not-for-profit BitSat project. A constellation of tiny BitSats will comprise an orbital node for the bitcoin network now on Earth, continuously broadcasting the latest bitcoin block from orbit, enhancing the resiliency of bitcoin in the event of disruptions or outages to the terrestrial bitcoin P2P mesh network.

"Private spaceflight is driving down costs so that great ideas like BitSats are within reach of even volunteer nonprofits," said Garzik, organizer of a donation-supported campaign to build and fly the system. "We want to keep bitcoin healthy and free by finding alternative ways to distribute block chain data."

Bitcoin transactions become official once a group is encoded – or "solved" by independent computing efforts -- into a block and added to the blockchain, a record of every bitcoin transfer ever made. BitSats will provide a cross-check verifying the blocks available on the terrestrial network haven't been spoofed, and also providing the latest blocks to locations off the terrestrial grid.

"Deep Space is about using space resources – including space itself," said Rick Tumlinson, DSI Chairman. "BitSat is actually very much in line with our spacecraft development plans, including another private system we will be announcing in a few months using many of the same components and systems. This means much lower costs - very important for the BitSat effort."

"I believe space is the future, and can also be useful right now," said Garzik. "I chose DSI for this project based on their proposal, the expertise they have internally and within their network and the fact that they are pushing the cutting edge – just as we are at Dunvegan."

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US Special Forces are Testing Cubesats for Communications, Other Roles

On November 19 of last year, the Department of Defense’s Office of Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) set a world record as a Minotaur 1 rocket lit up the sky at Wallops Island, Virginia, placing an unprecedented 29 CubeSats in orbit on a single launch. Among those were eight US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) CubeSats developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, New Mexico. These eight “Prometheus” CubeSats are part a CubeSat technology development and demonstration effort to explore the viability of using a CubeSat constellation to meet existing Special Operation Forces (SOF) mission requirements.

USSOCOM is the Department of Defense’s lead combatant command for planning, synchronizing, and executing operations aimed at combating terrorism around the globe in coordination with and in support of other combatant commanders. It is USSOCOM’s responsibility to ensure SOF operators in the field are well trained and equipped to operate in the highly dynamic security environment. The ability to initiate and execute collaborative science and technology development efforts is a critical enabler to USSOCOM initiatives to rapidly field SOF peculiar equipment. The USSOCOM CubeSat effort is just one of a handful of initiatives that will continue to improve the responsiveness of space capabilities and provide SOF operators with tactically relevant information by reducing tasking and data dissemination timelines.

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NASA MSFC Solicitation: Cubsesat Solar Sail Systems

Synopsis - Oct 25, 2013

General Information

Solicitation Number: NNM14ZPS001L

Posted Date: Oct 25, 2013

FedBizOpps Posted Date: Oct 25, 2013

Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No

Original Response Date: Nov 01, 2013

Current Response Date: Nov 04, 2013

Classification Code: A -- Research and Development

NAICS Code: 927110

Contracting Office Address

NASA/George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Procurement Office, Marshall Space Flight Center, AL 35812

Description

This notice is issued by NASA/MSFC to post a Request for Information (RFI) via the internet, and solicit responses from interested parties. Pursuant to FAR 52.215-3, this document is for information and planning purposes and to allow industry the opportunity to verify reasonableness and feasibility of the requirement, as well as promote competition. It does not constitute a Request for Proposal. This RFI is open but not limited to educational, industrial and not-for-profit organizations. Prospective offerors are invited to submit their responses no later than November 4, 2013.

NASA/MSFC is interested in solar sail systems for interplanetary robotic exploration that may be deployed from a cubesat. This RFI solicits information about solar sail systems that may be delivered for flight as soon as 2016.

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Future Planetary Exploration on Interplanetary Cubesats

I’ve seen the evolution of computers used as an analogy for the evolution of spacecraft. Once, all computers were massive machines (called mainframes). Then the evolution of electronics allowed the creation of what were known as mini-computers that expanded the number of organizations that could afford the computer. Further evolution brought the personal computer to billions of people, and now the smart phone allows hundreds of millions of use to carry computers in our pockets.

Similarly, planetary spacecraft originally tended to be large missions (today called Flagships). NASA’s New Frontiers and Discovery program enabled a series of lower cost missions that can be compared to mini-computers. As I discussed in an August post, planetary SmallSats could become the equivalent of personal computers.

Before the decade is out, I expect that we will have at least one planetary mission based on the equivalent of the smartphone, a CubeSat.

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I can confirm I had nothing to do with the post.  However, I can neither confirm nor deny I am involved in conspiracies to launch interplanetary cubesats.  ;)

Kickstarter For a Cubesat Ion Drive