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.

[mcaplinger]

As interesting as the Oberth effect is, it seems to have seen limited use in interplanetary missions so far, largely because spacecraft either don't have significant post-injection delta V capability or they need it all for orbit insertion at the target. (It does get used to the extent possible during that orbit insertion.)

For example, look at where the burns were in the Juno 2+ deltaV-EGA trajectory. https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2...08-2728_A1b.pdf

[HSchirmer]

As interesting as the Oberth effect is, it seems to have seen limited use in interplanetary missions so far, largely because spacecraft either don't have significant post-injection delta V capability or they need it all for orbit insertion at the target. (It does get used to the extent possible during that orbit insertion.) For example, look at where the burns were in the Juno 2+ deltaV-EGA trajectory. https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2...08-2728_A1b.pdf

You are absolutely right. My fault.
Until I read the story of Hiten/Delbruno https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover...stial-mechanics and watched Virginia Tech's Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering - Ross Dynamics Lab https://youtu.be/fV0kUmtQWZU?t=586 I didn't realized that this is OBVIOUS to me because it is logically identical to chemistry principles of "activation energy" and "phase space." And these have NO analog in orbital mechanics.

So here goes-
1) Launch a rack with cubesats into LEO.
2) Launch a fully fueled booster rocket into LEO.
3) Do a half-century ago Gemini program dock of cubesat payload & fully fueled booster.
4) Use a "Hiten-DelBruno maneuver" to move cubesats & booster from an Earth-Moon Lagrange point to a Sun-Earth Lagrange point.
6) Light the booster rocket and send a payload of cubesats to Mars & the asteroid belt using 10% of the fuel you'd usually need.

[mcaplinger]

1) Launch a rack with cubesats into LEO.
2) Launch a fully fueled booster rocket into LEO.
3) Do a half-century ago Gemini program dock of cubesat payload & fully fueled booster.
4) Use a "Hiten-DelBruno maneuver" to move cubesats & booster from an Earth-Moon Lagrange point to a Sun-Earth Lagrange point.
6) Light the booster rocket and send a payload of cubesats to Mars & the asteroid belt using 10% of the fuel you'd usually need.

Did it turn out that step 5 was unneeded?

Would this work in theory? Probably. Is it practical from an engineering perspective? Not really, at least not right now. For example, there are no "space tugs" with high delta V and long on-orbit duration. The Centaur upper stage, for example, has a lifetime measured in hours or maybe a few days.

There are a lot of competing constraints in mission design, it's not all about orbital dynamics.

[HSchirmer]

The Centaur upper stage, for example, has a lifetime measured in hours or maybe a few days.

Do you think it could be adapted to last 4 months? That would allow a Hiten-style path and put an upper stage into lunar orbit that arrives 90% full.

I looked but could not find Centaur on orbit specifications; can you post the link to those refernces?
(That is why I went with the Atlas Heavy RP1-LOX "double stack," it appears the RP1 lasts longer than cryogenic H2. However I'm guessing that MethaLox is stable for at least as long, given that SpaceX starship reliance on MethaLox at Mars.

Do the pros/mods have a list of the rocket fuels at used t Mars? I would guess that somebody here knows the history of Mars mission rocket fuels? I ask because that IS part of the basic blueprint for cubesat fuel to Mars and the asteroid belt. (If not, sounds like a great conference poster!)

[mcaplinger]

Do the pros/mods have any list of the various rocket fuels used on the way to Mars?

All US Mars missions have used either hydrazine monopropellant or MMH/N2O4 bipropellant. I'm unaware of any deep-space application for any cryogenic fuel of any kind after initial injection by the launch vehicle.

Centaur duration: "The present day Centaur vehicle looses [sic] upwards of 17-20 % lbm of Hydrogen per day" https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-sour...n-2006-7270.pdf (There
are also avionics thermal control constraints but I'm not sure how driving those are.)

Keep in mind that any mission of reasonable cost pretty much has to use off-the-shelf systems; they typically can't afford to develop their own from-scratch flight infrastructure.

[HSchirmer]

All US Mars missions have used either hydrazine monopropellant or MMH/N2O4 bipropellant. I'm unaware of any deep-space application for any cryogenic fuel of any kind after initial injection by the launch vehicle.
<snip>
Keep in mind that any mission of reasonable cost pretty much has to use off-the-shelf systems; they typically can't afford to develop their own from-scratch flight infrastructure.

(EDITED) Good points about cryogenics and good references as usual! That paper confirms a few months IS realistic. "It is feasible to achieve a long-duration cryogenic stage that can sustain itself in a ready state for weeks, months and potentially up to a year in an autonomous coast mode." Summary Page 6. So given how the Muses-A/Hiten project got 456 lbs to lunar orbit, in 5 months (instead of 3 days) but only used 10% fuel/delta-V we can expect to do the same with a similar weight payload of 150 standard cubesats. Once they're in lunar orbit, it's possible to get them to Mars, and beyond.
I had NOT seen the "Cubesat to Mars" proposal January 29,2020.
Jeff Dillon - Cubesat to Mars - 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K8_VkIjU9c
That "Cubesat to Mars" shows just how little fuel is needed to get a cube sat to Mars, IF you can get it to Lunar orbit.

Another way to avoid loosing cryogenic fuel is to not use cryogenics The British that launched their 'Prospero' satellite on a rocket called the "Black Arrow" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow which burned RP1 & H2O2(85%) and could put 135kg into LEO. That's a VERY interesting fuel mix: non cryogenic, stable, and 85% H2O2 is a possible monopropellant for reaction control & ullage. Also a VERY interesting payload weight, it's essentially 100 standard cubesats. If you were to remove the Black Arrow's "Waxwing" 3rd stage, you can pack in 300 more cubesats for a total of 400 cubesats out to Mars or the asteroid belt. Let's call the 2 stage version of the Black Arrow with 400 cubesats the "Black Bolt."

Replace the standard second stage of a Delta-IV heavy with the Black Bolt. Have the Delta-IV heavy put Black Bolt on a Hiten low fuel trajectory to lunar orbit. You've now got 2 stages @ 2.6 km/s each parked in lunar orbit with 400 cubesats.
-One option- an Oberth burn around Earth heading to the asteroid belt.
-Second option is to continue the "low fuel trajectory" from Lunar orbit to Mars. That would take longer, but you could deploy ~200 cubesats during the journey and use a Mars gravity assist to direct them into the inner asteroid belt. That leaves the Black Bolt time for a Mars gravity assists to put it into the outer asteroid belt with 200 cubesats in reserve and two 2.6 km/s stages available to disburse them. Use the first stage to spread 100 cubesats into the outer asteroid belt. Use the last stage to spread 100 cubesats among the Jovian Trojans.

[djellison]

You've now got 2 stages @ 2.6 km/s each parked in lunar orbit with 400 cubesats.

I'm afraid some extreme bubble bursting is required here.

How are you going to pay for, operate, communicate with and build these?

Note - the only cubesats to successfully operate beyond the EM system were the MarCO pair each of which were 6U cubesats of 13.5kg each. They were not 1kg 1U 'standard' cubesats. They lasted ~9 months. They required DSN time (which is tens of thousands of dollars per hour). They had deployable high gain antennas, a finite attitude control system, and a budget of over $18M for the two.

They had basically no instrumentation beyond a UHF radio for InSIGHT relay and two 50g worse-than-SD-quality cameras (of which only 1 of the 4 flown actually worked properly) They could communicate at only 8kbps during their prime mission.

The Delta IV heavy you propose using is a $400M launch vehicle. You can't just replace its second stage - that's required to even reach LEO. A Delta IV heavy WITH it's second stage can't even get a Black Arrow to GTO, let alone a trans lunar injection.


You're definitely going a bit beyond blue sky thinking here.


The way to do Cubesats beyond the EM system is to piggy back a couple at a time on a larger dedicated missions as MarCO did with InSIGHT - or to pay for a dedicated ride with someone like Rocket Lab whose upgraded Electron rocket can now deliver Cubesats beyond the EM system.

What cubesats are doing is incredible.

They are not some magical panacea that can be scattered across the solar system by KSP style magical engineering.

[HSchirmer]

I'm afraid some extreme bubble bursting is required here.

Fair enough, these are ideas, not CAD drawings.

How are you going to pay for, operate, communicate with and build these?

-Funding the science is supported by mapping the billions of dollars in metals that reside in the asteroid belt; same way that the science of geology piggybacks off oil/natural gas drilling and locating ore deposits. Funding might also reflect the need to have a "repeater" for the Deep Space Network to relay signals, where a mesh of satellites with radios provides redundancy for deep space data, and a VLA the size of the asteroid belt.
-Communication would not be to any one satellite, but to a "mesh network" probably leave a trio of larger, smarter "repeaters" in orbit around Mars to provide 3x throughput and tridundancy for talking to the "mesh". Basic cubesats would be similar to the concept of SpaceX's Starlink, although each Starlink is much larger, 260 kg or roughly 200 cubesats. I had not based the idea on Starlink, but those basic specifications are a good place to start: 4 phased array RF antennas, standardized solar panels, ion propulsion for station keeping, a star tracking camera, and collision avoidance/database of objects in orbit.
-Initial operation would be a 3d version of the "picket fence" that detected that Arrokoth was a contact binary using 21 occultation observations over time. Sometimes the LACK of data and for how long, IS the data your looking for. This is comparable to router firmware "load balancing" that detect data dropouts- except here the data dropouts would be loss of visual signal as an asteroid passes between a cubesat and the tracking stars, or loss of radio signal as an asteroid passes between two cubesats. This builds up a 3d map of occultations, which gives you asteroid locations.
After you build up a basic map, you'd move to an extended mission of trying to actively "ping" a specific asteroid and have other cubesats listen in to triangulate position like GPS. Then ping from different cubesats to build a 3d map of interesting asteroids, and finally ping at different frequencies to build up a texture map of really interesting asteroids.

-Building would be by the lowest qualified bidder. There would probably be a mix of cubesat sizes, 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x. Starting with 200 to 400 units, you would trade performance for redundancy.

The Delta IV heavy you propose using is a $400M launch vehicle. You can't just replace its second stage - that's required to even reach LEO. A Delta IV heavy WITH it's second stage can't even get a Black Arrow to GTO, let alone a trans lunar injection.

Good point, IIRC, the early specs indicated they could do LEO by throttling down the center core after lift off to conserver fuel, then throttling up after the outer 2 separated. This might have needed a vacuum nozzle for the center core and been unstable at sea level.
Better solution would be, since the 1st & 2nd stages of the "Black Arrow" have the same 2.6km/s but the 1st is heavier, use a pair of the lighter 2nd stages for the "Black Bolt" to get a lighter craft with the same specific impulse, that would meet lunar payload limits.

You're definitely going a bit beyond blue sky thinking here. The way to do Cubesats beyond the EM system is to piggy back a couple at a time on a larger dedicated missions as MarCO did with InSIGHT - or to pay for a dedicated ride with someone like Rocket Lab whose upgraded Electron rocket can now deliver Cubesats beyond the EM system.

Yes, that's the traditional way to do cubesats. But not the only way. I'm thinking in NK, number of nodes, number of connections. Since NASA/ESA/JAXA will need more deep space bandwidth, a distributed communications network further out isn't unprecedented, and using data dropouts to map the asteroid belt, is, admittedly thinking counter to expectations.