Small satellites beyond boundaries
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EDITORIAL
Small satellites beyond boundaries P. Tortora1
© The Author(s) 2020
It is a great pleasure for me to present this special issue of the CEAS Space Journal devoted to Small Satellites Beyond Boundaries. This brings together some of the most interesting presentations delivered throughout several conferences held in the last couple of years in the area of Small Satellites and CubeSats. Small satellites (and, more recently, CubeSats) were initially developed for educational purposes, however their capabilities have opened a new design space for exploration that includes stand-alone spacecraft, constellations, and mother–daughter systems that collaborate. In light of recent advances in science instruments and spacecraft miniaturization technologies that have emerged in just the past few years, small spacecraft can now be considered for use in planetary exploration, either as adjuncts to larger missions on which they could “catch a ride” to the most remote and challenging destinations in the solar system, or in some cases, as stand-alone missions of their own. The first ever experience of an interplanetary mission carried out using CubeSats is the Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission to Mars, flown as a companion to the InSight mission to Mars. Next, a spectacular set of 13 CubeSats will be delivered in 2021 to a high lunar orbit within the frame of NASA’s Artemis-1 mission—the first launch of their new space launch system (SLS) rocket. Can small satellites expand the boundaries of our knowledge and be the key element of the next era of solar system exploration and deep space observation? In the seventies the great advancement of solar system exploration was carried out through relatively large and heavy missions like Voyagers and Pioneers, which turned out to be unbelievably reliable, but at a large price in terms of mission cost and development time. In the nineties the * P. Tortora [email protected] 1
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Interdepartmental Center for Industrial Research in Aerospace (CIRI‑AERO), Alma Mater Studiorum—Università di Bologna, Forlì (FC), Italy
flagship missions which followed up (like Galileo and Cassini) were even larger, more complex and expensive than their predecessors, but accomplished wonderful enterprises at their target Jupiter and Saturn planetary systems. We are now at a turning point, where smaller systems can accomplish missions unthinkable just a few years ago. Small satellites have dramatically reduced the cost of Earth observation and they are on the course of making deep space exploration and observation missions more affordable. The first paper by Freeman presents an overview of the technological challenges and the new opportunities offered by the first pair of interplanetary CubeSats launched to Mars to provide a relay capability for the InSight lander back to Earth. In addition, this paper provides an overview of other CubeSat mission developments at JPL, in particular two CubeSats that are currently under development and that will form part of the ‘swa
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