Related papers: CubeSats for Astronomy and Astrophysics

Advances in space weather science and small satellite (SmallSat) technology have proceeded in parallel over the past two decades, but better communication and coordination is needed among the respective worldwide communities contributing to…

Optical navigation on a CubeSat must rely on the best extraction of the directions of some beacons from on-board images. We present an experiment on OPS-SAT, a CubeSat of the European Space Agency (ESA), that will characterize an onboard…

In the wake of the rapid deployment of large-scale low-Earth orbit satellite constellations, exploiting the full computing potential of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices in these environments has become a pressing issue. However,…

In the present article, a new system architecture for the next generation of satellite communication (SatComs) is presented. The key concept lies in the collaboration between multibeam satellites that share one orbital position.…

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)…

Due to advances in observation and imaging technologies, modern astronomical satellites generate large volumes of data. This necessitates efficient onboard data processing and high-speed data downlink. Reflecting this trend is the VERTECS…

HaloSat is a small satellite (CubeSat) designed to map soft X-ray oxygen line emission across the sky in order to constrain the mass and spatial distribution of hot gas in the Milky Way. The goal of HaloSat is to help determine if hot gas…

CUBES is a X-ray detector payload which will be installed on the KTH 3U CubeSat mission, MIST. The detector comprises cerium-doped Gd3Al2Ga3O12 (GAGG) scintillators read out with silicon photomultipliers through a Citiroc…

We advocate a low-cost strategy for long-duration research into the 'milligravity' environment of asteroids, comets and small moons, where surface gravity is a vector field typically less than 1/1000 the gravity of Earth. Unlike the…

In this paper, a practical approach to the trajectory design for asteroid exploration missions with CubeSats is presented. When applied trajectories are sought, operative concerns and uncertainties affecting the spacecraft dynamics must be…

To achieve mass, power, and cost reduction, there is a trend to reduce the volume of many instruments aboard spacecraft, especially for small spacecraft (cubesats or nanosats) with very limited mass, volume and power budgets. With the…

CubeSats have democratised access to space for universities, start-ups and emerging space nations, but the same design decisions that reduce cost and complexity introduce distinctive cybersecurity risks. Existing risk assessment…

The 3UCubed project is a 3U CubeSat being jointly developed by the University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State University, and Howard University as a part of the NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, IMAP, student collaboration.…

CubeSat-based nanosatellites are composed of COTS components and rely on its structure and standardized interfaces. A challenge in the nanosatellites context is to adapt the V\&V (Verification and Validation) process to answer to the…

The Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) is a NASA-funded 6U-CubeSat mission designed to monitor ultraviolet (UV) radiation from low-mass stars. These stars' relatively high-frequency and high-energy UV flares significantly affect…

Instruments flown on CubeSats are small. Meaningful applications of CubeSats in astronomical observations rely on the choice of a particular subject that is feasible for CubeSats. Here we report the result of a feasibility study for…

The use of cubesat swarms is being proposed for different missions where cooperation between satellites is required. Commonly, the cube swarm requires formation flight and even rendezvous and docking, which are very challenging tasks since…

PolarLight is a compact soft X-ray polarimeter onboard a CubeSat, which was launched into a low-Earth orbit on October 29, 2018. In March 2019, PolarLight started full operation, and since then, regular observations with the Crab nebula,…

This paper presents a mission concept that enables Earth-Mars communications resistant to periods of solar conjunction by using CubeSat satellites equipped with a solar sail. The dynamics of the satellite is modeled separately in the…

Quantum Communications on planetary scale require complementary channels including ground and satellite links. The former have progressed up to commercial stage using fiber-cables, while for satellite links, the absence of terminals in…