正方体卫星
航天器
航空航天工程
光伏系统
天王星
遥感
测距
物理
美国宇航局深空网络
计算机科学
激光器
电气工程
光学
天文
卫星
行星
工程类
电信
地质学
作者
Nicolas Lee,Jared T. Blanchard,Kegan Kawamura,Benjamin Weldon,Michael Ying,Sean A. Q. Young,Sigrid Close
出处
期刊:Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets
[American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics]
日期:2022-08-23
卷期号:59 (6): 2175-2186
被引量:1
摘要
We present a mission concept to study the capability for a parent spacecraft to transmit power and remotely manipulate a small probe spacecraft, potentially as small as a chipsat, which is a spacecraft constructed on a single printed circuit board, through a laser transmitter. This concept, referred to as sustained chipsat/CubeSat activity through transmitted electromagnetic radiation, enables the mothership to intermittently deploy probes to make distributed measurements where the use of only photovoltaic, battery, or radioisotope power sources would be infeasible. Using these probes during a long-duration deep space mission to Uranus would provide enhanced scientific measurements such as magnetic field gradients, leading to a better understanding of the ice giants, which are the least explored planets in our solar system. In this paper, we assess the feasibility of using a mothership-based laser for wireless power transfer, translation and attitude control, and communication of probes ranging from a minimal-mass chipsat to a 3U CubeSat, where U refers to a standard 10 cm CubeSat volume. We find that the best performance is achieved with an intermediate probe size, corresponding to a 0.5U CubeSat, which could capture over an order of magnitude more power than the chipsat while being agile enough to maintain attitude control using laser photon pressure.
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