Technical Sessions

Session II: Around the Corner

Chair: Dave Beckett, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation

Monday, August 9, 2010

4:45 p.m. Performance Validation of the Triangular Rollable And Collapsible Mast

Jeremy Banik, Thomas Murphey – Air Force Research Laboratory/Space Vehicles Directorate

ABSTRACT: A new deployable boom concept invented by AFRL has recently been gaining strong attention by those in the MicroSat and CubeSat communities. The Triangular Rollable And Collapsible (TRAC) mast has been demonstrated to enable new planar payloads and thus new mission concepts due to its extremely efficient packaging scheme. Several different material and geometric variations on the TRAC mast have been demonstrated to date. This mast can be engineered for either high packaging efficiency or high structural performance. The thinnest version is constructed from stainless steel allowing it to be packaged along with three other 4.0-meter long booms into a ½ U CubeSat volume. High structural performance versions are constructed of a carbon composite laminate that enable stiffer payloads such as a retractable 10m2 solar sail. The deployed structural performance of these booms has been predicted and these models have been validated through structural testing.

5:00 p.m.WNISAT – Nanosatellite for North Arctic Routes and Atmosphere Monitoring

Sangkyun Kim, Takashi Eishima, Naoki Miyashita, Yuta Nojiri, Yuya Nakamura – AXELSPACE

ABSTRACT: WNISAT is a 10kg weight nanosatellite of the sun-synchronous low earth orbit, currently being developed by Weathernews Inc. and AXELSPACE, and waiting for the launch with PSLV of India until the year of 2011. Weathernews Inc. is the largest private weather service company headquartered in Japan, which have many sea liners as their customers. Currently, the north arctic ice region reaches the lowest level every year, and sea liners have great interest for this because the north arctic routes means very short distance compare to other routes. Many approaches have been suggested for the monitoring of north arctic routes, and constellation of small satellites is one of the best ways considering efficiency. From this reason, Weathernews Inc, decided to develop small satellites in close collaboration with AXELSPACE. AXELSPACE is a university venture company established in 2008, all engineers have considerable experience in the field of small satellites of nano-class through many projects of their universities. There are two major missions for WNISAT, the first mission is earth observation of commercial use as like explained already. It is challenging to provide with the ice coverage information over high latitude oceans including NIR spectral ranges. And the second mission is atmosphere monitoring for environmental issue, the density of carbon dioxide in atmosphere using a laser application. The bus system of spacecraft and the first mission development are being led by AXELSPACE. The laser application for the second mission is under development by Weathernews Inc. The object of this WNISAT is to show the feasibility of nanosatellite for two major missions, especially the commercial use of small satellites of nano-class. After this WNISAT, several satellites are scheduled for the practical and commercial use within three or five years. At first, this paper will review progress in the development of WNISAT. And, the entire structure of spacecraft and the sub-systems are presented for the review and the detail explanation. After that, it will review the relevance of WNISAT's technology to advanced sensing concepts, reliable and efficient remote sensing and issues of atmospheric carbon dioxide content monitoring. Finally, future schedule after WNISAT is also briefly presented.

5:15 p.m. Sapphire: A Small Satellite System for the Surveillance of Space

Robert Leitch, Ian Hemphill – MDA Systems Ltd.

ABSTRACT: The tracking of man-made objects in Earth orbit is a crucial function of the Canadian Space Surveillance System (CSSS). This system will contribute information to the United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN) which maintains a global catalog of orbit elements for Resident Space Objects (RSOs). RSOs include active and inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, and other pieces of orbital debris created by decades of human activity in space. Sapphire is a small satellite system that will form the centerpiece of the CSSS, providing an operationally flexible space-based platform for the precise tracking and identification of RSOs covering orbit altitudes in the range from 6000 km to 40000 km. The Sapphire system, including a satellite, ground segment, launch, and operations, is currently being developed by MDA for the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND), with satellite launch scheduled for 2011. This paper describes the Sapphire design. Sapphire must meet demanding performance requirements for RSO detection and pointing determination accuracy as well as system responsiveness and imaging task throughput. Sapphire will provide continuous service over a mission life of at least five years. The paper discusses the approaches used to build a robust capability into a small satellite package, including the extensive use of flight-proven heritage in the satellite subsystems. In addition, the paper discusses the role of the satellite with respect to the ground system elements and summarizes some of the major system-level tradeoffs from the design process.

5:30 p.m. The Radio Aurora Explorer – A Bistatic Radar Mission to Measure Space Weather Phenomenon

James Cutler, Matthew Bennett, Andrew Klesh – University of Michigan; Hasan Bahcivan, Rick Doe – SRI International

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we describe the Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) and its space weather mission. RAX is a satellite mission funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study space weather, and is a joint effort between SRI International and the University of Michigan. The primary mission objective is to study plasma instabilities that lead to magnetic field-aligned irregularities (FAI) of electron density in the lower polar thermosphere (80-400 km). These irregularities are known to disrupt trans-ionospheric communication and navigation signals. The RAX mission will use a network of existing ground radars that will scatter signals off the FAI to be measured by a receiver on the RAX spacecraft. The satellite is a 3kg CubeSat with a scheduled launch in late 2010. RAX is the first of the NSF-sponsored satellites to be manifested for a launch and represents a path forging activity for similar science missions conducted on nanosatellite vehicles.