Cubesats for Solar System Exploration Options

[vjkane]

[ADMIN NOTE: New topic started using moved posts from Pallas telescopic observation topic. Please read and keep rule 1.9 in mind. Thanks!]


I was hoping that NASA would select the Athena mission to do a flyby of Pallas using a cubesat spacecraft under the SIMPLEx program. It selected the Janus mission to flyby two near Earth asteroid binary systems instead. The Athena team plans to submit again.

[antipode]

That's good news vjkane! Cubesats for initial exploration of interesting NEOs and objects out to the main belt seem like a great way to go.
I think there's a need for an ongoing program that sits well under the Discovery class cost-wise that can take advantage of cubesat architectures with limited but focused payloads,
only solar power, and new cheaper smallsat launchers or rideshare opportunities.

P

[vjkane]

That's good news vjkane! Cubesats for initial exploration of interesting NEOs and objects out to the main belt seem like a great way to go.
I think there's a need for an ongoing program that sits well under the Discovery class cost-wise that can take advantage of cubesat architectures with limited but focused payloads,
only solar power, and new cheaper smallsat launchers or rideshare opportunities.

P

Don't get too excited. While it was ranked Category 1 (fully selectable on science and implementation), NASA didn't select it. There also has to be a launch opportunity. The previous proposal made use of the Psyche Mars flyby and the fact that Pallas is currently close to the ecliptic.

All we know about the new proposal, based on the PI's statements, is that the next version will be much better.

[JRehling]

Given the low mass of cubesats, I wonder about a mission that sends many of them on a Jupiter (or, possibly, Earth) flyby and spreads them out enough, before the flyby, for the gravity assist to scatter them into solar orbits that cross back through the asteroid belt and fly by many different targets from an initially-similar trajectory. There have to be many opportunities for such orbits to intersect the orbits of two targets (out of thousands to choose from) so that the number of asteroids observed could be on the order of 1.5 per cubesat. Thereby, one low-mass mission could give us flyby observations of many asteroids.

The investment in delta-v for the Jupiter flyby would be high if you only wanted to observe a single target, but for the payoff of observing many targets, the science / cost would become more appealing.

The devil is in the details as to what a Jupiter gravity assist can achieve, but a couple of inspiring examples are Pioneer 11, which gained a high inclination en route to its Saturn flyby, Ulysses, which gained a 79° inclination for observing the Sun. Getting to Pallas is easy in comparison to either of those.

[vjkane]

Given the low mass of cubesats, I wonder about a mission that sends many of them on a Jupiter (or, possibly, Earth) flyby and spreads them out enough, before the flyby, for the gravity assist to scatter them into solar orbits that cross back through the asteroid belt and fly by many different targets from an initially-similar trajectory. There have to be many opportunities for such orbits to intersect the orbits of two targets (out of thousands to choose from) so that the number of asteroids observed could be on the order of 1.5 per cubesat. Thereby, one low-mass mission could give us flyby observations of many asteroids.

The investment in delta-v for the Jupiter flyby would be high if you only wanted to observe a single target, but for the payoff of observing many targets, the science / cost would become more appealing.

The devil is in the details as to what a Jupiter gravity assist can achieve, but a couple of inspiring examples are Pioneer 11, which gained a high inclination en route to its Saturn flyby, Ulysses, which gained a 79° inclination for observing the Sun. Getting to Pallas is easy in comparison to either of those.

That's almost certainly ballastically possible. Two issues: 1) cubesats still have low reliability and therefore lifetimes and 2) no one has figured out how to as dramatically cut the mission operations costs.