Crazy Engineering: CubeSats
CubeSat Design (credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
A new satellite technology is being developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. Called CubeSats, these breadbox-sized, remote-sensing robots will each have a single, dedicated, environmental or planetary monitoring function. While small, CubeSats can be built using off-the-shelf parts from any ACE hardware story, they carry high performance credentials. According to Lab, the solar-powered sats are even more technically capable than earlier generations of far-larger Earth monitoring craft. They are just miniaturized to perform one task.
Many of the JPL's planetary missions have one thing in common: tight weight, volume, and power use requirements. The super-creative, 'out-of-the-box' engineers have built a variety of new digital sensors and instruments enabling individual CubeSat to carry: infrared spectrometers, micro-GPS, compact radiometers, short wavelength radar scanners, cameras, magnetometers, and other high-tech gear. With each of these micro-satellites, a specific environmental, physical, or chemical measurement can be accomplished.
One of the first cubsat demonstrations was launched aboard NASA's InSight mission to study the interior makeup of Mars. InSight's larger 'mother ship' carried two twin CubeSats called MARCO (Mars Cube-sat One). MARCO provided the ability to rapidly transmit information from the InSight lander back to Earth. Mike Meacham, a JPL engineer, explains the design in an episode of his series, Crazy Engineering, to explain these powerful little satellites and their potential.
Such creativity is not so 'crazy' when considering that valuable scientific data is beamed back in real-time. The new technology will find major uses here on Earth as well as Mars. WHB
CubeSat design (credit: JPL)