Related papers: Optical communication on CubeSats - Enabling the n…

The prospect of mankind returning to the Moon has garnered a great amount of attention in recent years. Dozens of lunar missions are planned for the coming decade which will require the development of a sustainable communication…

The Lunar Gateway is expected to be positioned on-orbit around the Moon or in a Halo orbit at the L2 Lagrange point. The proposed Lunar Gateway is a game-changer for enabling new, high-priority lunar science utilizing Cu-beSats and presents…

CubeSats are routinely used for low-cost photometry from space. Space-borne spectroscopy, however, is still the exclusive domain of much larger platforms. Key astrophysical questions in e.g. stellar physics and exoplanet research require…

AcubeSAT is an open-source CubeSat mission aiming to explore the effects of microgravity and radiation on eukaryotic cells using a compact microfluidic lab-on-a-chip platform. It is developed by SpaceDot, a volunteer, interdisciplinary…

Free-space optical communication is becoming a mature technology that has been demonstrated in space a number of times in the last few years. The Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has carried…

Quantum key distribution is costly and, at the moment, offers low performance in space applications. Other more recent protocols could offer a potential practical solution to this problem. In this work, a preliminary optical payload design…

The article is a short overview of a proposal of a CubeSat type nanosatellite designed to conduct biopharmaceutical tests on the low earth orbit. Motivations behind the emerging demand for such solution nowadays and in the close future are…

Space systems miniaturization has been increasingly popular for the past decades, with over 1600 CubeSats and 300 sub-CubeSat sized spacecraft estimated to have been launched since 1998. This trend towards decreasing size enables the…

AEROS aims to develop a nanosatellite as a precursor of a future system of systems, which will include assets and capabilities of both new and existing platforms operating in the Ocean and Space, equipped with state-of-the-art sensors and…

The second Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS-2) CubeSat, which begins its flight in late 2018, builds on the success of MinXSS-1, which flew from 2016-05-16 to 2017-05-06. The science instrument is more advanced -- now capable of…

The design of a CubeSat telescope for academic research purposes must balance complicated optical and structural designs with cost to maximize performance in extreme environments. Increasing the CubeSat size (eg. 6U to 12U) will increase…

For decades, satellites have facilitated remote internet of things (IoT) services. However, the recent proliferation of increasingly capable sensors and a surge in the number deployed, has led to a substantial growth in the volume of data…

Small satellites, especially picosatellites, appear poised to play an important role in the future of space systems. Due to their size, however, integrating them with high-throughput laser-based communication systems remains a challenge. In…

Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a theoretically proven future-proof secure encryption method that inherits its security from fundamental physical principles. Craft Prospect, working with a number of UK organisations, has been focused on…

The idea behind FIRST (Fibered Imager foR a Single Telescope) is to use single-mode fibers to combine multiple apertures in a pupil plane as such as to synthesize a bigger aperture. The advantages with respect to a pure imager are i)…

The sixth-generation (6G) network is expected to achieve global coverage based on the space-air-ground integrated network, and the latest satellite network will play an important role in it. The introduction of inter-satellite links (ISLs)…

To enable space-based quantum key distribution proposals the Centre for Quantum Technologies is developing a source of entangled photons ruggedized to survive deployment in space and greatly miniaturised so that it conforms to the strict…

The rapid advancement and miniaturization of spacecraft electronics, sensors, actuators, and power systems have resulted in growing proliferation of small-spacecraft. Coupled with this is the growing number of rocket launches, with…

Sensitive computation often has to be performed in a trusted execution environment (TEE), which, in turn, requires tamper-proof hardware. If the computational fabric can be tampered with, we may no longer be able to trust the correctness of…

With a large number of deep space (DS) missions anticipated by the end of this decade, reliable and high-capacity DS communications are needed more than ever. Nevertheless, existing technologies are far from meeting such a goal. Improving…