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Post Info TOPIC: ExoplanetSat
Blobrana


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RE: ExoplanetSat
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Last spring, Seager and David Miller of MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics began a three-semester class to explore using CubeSats as a way to search for exoplanets transiting very bright stars. Seager's idea is that the odds of detecting a transiting planet orbiting a bright star increase significantly if there is just one telescope dedicated to observing a star that neither Kepler nor TESS can observe.
The concept eventually developed into ExoplanetSat, a research program that is designed to launch a fleet of about one dozen "triple CubeSats" (three cubes stuck together), and about another two dozen six-unit CubeSats into low-Earth orbit. Each satellite would have its own computer, processor and tiny camera and would be pointed at an individual star. Although the program doesn't have funding yet, MIT students will try to build two prototypes within the next two years and then hopefully secure funding for a formal mission to send dozens of the tiny cubes into space.
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Blobrana


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Title: ExoplanetSat: Detecting transiting exoplanets using a low-cost CubeSat platform
Author: Smith, Matthew William; Seager, Sara; Pong, Christopher Masaru; Villasenor, Jesus Noel Samonte; Ricker, George R., Jr.; Miller, David W.; Knapp, Mary E.; Farmer, Grant Trapnell; Jensen-Clem, Rebecca M.

Nanosatellites, i.e. spacecraft that weigh between 1 and 10 kg, are drawing increasing interest as platforms for conducting on-orbit science. This trend is primarily driven by the ability to piggyback nanosatellites on the launch of large spacecraft and hence achieve orbit at greatly reduced cost. The CubeSat platform is a standardized nanosatellite configuration, consisting of one, two, or three 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm units (1, 2, or 3 "U"s) arranged in a row. We present a CubeSat-based concept for the discovery of transiting exoplanets around the nearest and brightest Sun-like stars. The spacecraft prototype - termed ExoplanetSat - is a 3U space telescope capable of monitoring a single target star from low Earth orbit. Given the volume limitations of the CubeSat form factor, designing a capable spacecraft requires overcoming significant challenges. This work presents the initial satellite configuration along with several subsystem-specific solutions to the aforementioned constraints. An optical design based on a modified commercial off-the-shelf camera lens is given. We also describe a novel two-stage attitude control architecture that combines 3-axis reaction wheels for coarse pointing with a piezoelectric translation stage at the focal plane for fine pointing. Modelling and simulation results are used to demonstrate feasibility by quantifying ExoplanetSat pointing precision, signal-to-noise ratio, guide star magnitude, and additional design parameters which determine system performance.

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