Related papers: Aalto-1, multi-payload CubeSat: In-orbit results a…
Small satellites such as CubeSats pose demanding requirements on the weight, size, and multifunctionality of their structures due to extreme constraints on the payload mass and volume. To address this challenge, we introduce a concept of…
The New Horizons mission was launched on 2006 January 19, and the spacecraft is heading for a flyby encounter with the Pluto system in the summer of 2015. The challenges associated with sending a spacecraft to Pluto in less than 10 years…
We describe the development and implementation of a light-weight, fully autonomous 2-axis pointing and stabilization system designed for balloon-borne astronomical payloads. The system is developed using off-the-shelf components such as…
Robo-AO is the first autonomous laser adaptive optics system and science instrument operating on sky. With minimal human oversight, the system robotically executes large scale surveys, monitors long-term astrophysical dynamics and…
The increase in the application of the satellite has skyrocketed the number of satellites, especially in the low earth orbit. The major concern today is after the end of life, these satellites become debris which negatively affects the…
LightCube is a 1U educational CubeSat which had the goal of connecting the public with space by producing a flash visible to the naked eye on command by a public user. The spacecraft could be triggered via HAM radio communications by those…
In this work, performance of a multi-antenna multiuser unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted terrestrial-satellite communication system over mixed free space optics (FSO)/ radio frequency (RF) channels is analyzed. Downlink transmission…
Given the increasing number of space-related applications, research in the emerging space industry is becoming more and more attractive. One compelling area of current space research is the design of miniaturized satellites, known as…
Radio astronomy has traditionally depended on observatories allocating time to observers for exclusive use of their telescopes. The disadvantage of this scheme is that the data thus collected is rarely used for other astronomy applications,…
Insight-HXMT is the first Chinese X-ray astronomical mission, launched successfully on June 15, 2017, from China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Insight-HXMT was designed to have a broad energy coverage in X-rays, from 1-250 keV, with…
Recent years have seen the rapid deployment of low-cost CubeSats in low-Earth orbit, primarily for research, education, and Earth observation. The vast majority of these CubeSats experience significant latency (several hours) from the time…
The CUbesat Solar Polarimeter (CUSP) project aims to develop a constellation of two CubeSats orbiting the Earth to measure the linear polarization of solar flares in the hard X-ray band by means of a Compton scattering polarimeter on board…
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) operated successfully during a 100-hour flight from northern Sweden in June 2005 (BLAST05). As part of the calibration and pointing procedures, several compact sources were…
The Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal (SpIRIT) 6U CubeSat is a mission led by The University of Melbourne in cooperation with the Italian Space Agency. Launched in a 510 km Polar Sun Synchronous Orbit in December 2023, SpIRIT…
We propose a fleet of nanosatellites to perform an all-sky monitoring and timing based localisation of gamma-ray transients. The fleet of at least nine 3U cubesats shall be equipped with large and thin CsI(Tl) scintillator based soft…
The Extremely Low-Resource Optical Identifier (ELROI) beacon is a concept for a milliwatt optical "license plate" that can provide unique ID numbers for everything that goes into space. Using photon counting to enable extreme background…
[Abridged] The Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT) is the new 64-m dish operated by INAF (Italy). Its active surface will allow us to observe at frequencies of up to 116 GHz. At the moment, three receivers, one per focal position, have been…
A NASA sounding rocket for high-contrast imaging with a visible nulling coronagraph, the PICTURE payload, has made two suborbital attempts to observe the warm dust disk inferred around Epsilon Eridani. The first flight in 2011 demonstrated…
The European Space Agency's Planck satellite was launched on 14 May 2009, and has been surveying the sky stably and continuously since 13 August 2009. Its performance is well in line with expectations, and it will continue to gather…
CubeSats and small satellites are emerging as low-cost tools to perform astronomy, exoplanet searches and earth observation. These satellites can be dedicated to pointing at targets for weeks or months at a time. This is typically not…