CubeSat-based Science Missions for Space Weather and Atmospheric Research (NSF Announcement )

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FReepmail me to get on or off

Please be advised that the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) includes revised guidelines to implement the mentoring provisions of the America COMPETES Act (ACA) (Pub. L. No. 110-69, Aug. 9, 2007.) As specified in the ACA, each proposal that requests funding to support postdoctoral researchers must include a description of the mentoring activities that will be provided for such individuals. Proposals that do not comply with this requirement will be returned without review (see the PAPP Guide Part I: Grant Proposal Guide Chapter II for further information about the implementation of this new requirement).

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Lack of essential observations from space is currently a major limiting factor in space weather research. Recent advances in sensor and spacecraft technologies make it feasible to obtain key measurements from low-cost, small satellite missions. A particularly promising aspect of this development is the prospect for obtaining multi-point observations in space that are critical for addressing many outstanding problems in space science. Space-based measurements from small satellites also have great potential to advance discovery and understanding in other areas of atmospheric sciences. To take full advantage of these developments, NSF is soliciting research proposals centered on small satellite missions.

The overarching goal of the program is to support the development, construction, launch, operation, and data analysis of small satellite science missions to advance space weather and atmospheric research. Equally important, it will provide essential opportunities to train the next generation of experimental space scientists and aerospace engineers.

To facilitate launch of the satellites as secondary payloads on existing missions, the focus of the program is on CubeSat-based satellites. Launch of the satellites will be through the standardized CubeSat deployment system, the Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD). Launch of the P-PODS will be as auxiliary payloads on DOD, NASA, or commercial launches. This will be arranged directly by NSF and is not part of this solicitation. Beginning in 2009, NSF expects to launch two to three P-PODs every year, accommodating at least as many (two to six) individual satellite missions. This solicitation covers proposals for science missions to include satellite development, construction, testing and operation as well as data distribution and scientific analysis.

Will be adding more to this thread.

Cubesats: Tiny Spacecraft, Huge Payoffs

By Leonard David Senior Space Writer
posted: 08 September, 2004 7:00 a.m. ET

LOGAN, UTAH -- Experts say the big news in spacecraft building involves ultra-small CubeSats.

These petite but powerful satellites are spearheading a hands-on revolution around the world. And what fist-sized CubeSats bring to space could mimic innovations sparked by the personal computer here on Earth.

To look at them, you don't see much ...and that's a good thing. No massive, expensive spacecraft that has been years in the making and loaded to its sprawling solar panels with super-electronics and other posh payload parts.

A standard CubeSat is a motherboard of invention: About a 4-inch (10-centimeter) block of equipment that tips the scale at roughly 2 pounds (1 kilogram). A handful are already in space and with other launches planned for later this year.

Peep inside a CubeSat and you'll spot off-the-shelf circuitry in the familiar form of microprocessors and modem ports, and other microchip devices typically used in cell phones, digital cameras and hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation units.

CubeSats will make be easier and more cost effective to deploy into orbit.

Global congregation

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Utah State University showcased the pint-sized payloads at the 18th annual Conference on Small Satellites, held here last month.

The CubeSat initiative is a global congregation of universities and private firms striving to advance small satellite technology. Of the participating universities, more than 60 percent of CubeSat developers reside in the United States.

In June 2003, six CubeSats were lobbed into orbit from Russia's Plesetsk launch site, executed by Eurockot Launch Services GmbH of Bremen, Germany.

Later this year, if all stays on track, over a dozen universities from around the world will take part in hurling their CubeSats into space via a Dnper rocket. This launcher -- an SS-18 missile sans warhead -- has been rehabilitated into a "ride for hire" booster offered by ISC Kosmotras.

"When we started this, I thought that it made sense for everybody to collaborate," said Robert Twiggs, professor and consultant at Stanford University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a pioneer in the rapidly growing world of small satellites. "I'm very pleased that it's going the way it is."

Twiggs' main interest is in the development, launch and operation of small, econo-class orbiters to do feasibility demonstrations and to space-qualify new and novel components. He is also spearheading the miniaturization of space experiments for low-cost satellite missions.

Good things are coming

A CubeSat can be built for under $25,000, although they typically come in at the $30,000 to $40,000 price range - still a bargain. The "going-rate" per CubeSat launch is in the $40,000 range.

There's already a CubeSat Kit being offered that gives a builder a leg up on turning a space mission into reality - and meeting a launch date "on time and under budget," says one product brochure.

Regarding what services CubeSats can perform, Twiggs said that he doesn't have the foggiest idea of what the "killer application" of the little satellites will prove to be. However, as for their utility, he's quick to respond.

"The utility to me is to educate the students. The electronics are starting to get better...the efficiency of solar cells is going up...and in a couple of years they're going to be very capable little satellites. I think some good things are coming," Twiggs told SPACE.com.

Commercial off-the-shelf

CubeSats aren't built with special parts in huge NASA facilities.

"We use everything we can get," Twiggs said. "If you've got lots of room to put everything in, you end up not being too careful with it. That's the challenge. You've got to really think hard when you're putting together a CubeSat."

The key to building small is taking the "COTS" approach -- buying Commercial Off-The-Shelf. "I think that's really the way to go," Twiggs advised. For a few tens of dollars you can acquire capability that the "big guys" obtain at mega-dollar prices.

Because the industry is new, "we don't know how it has been done so we're less constrained by the established way to solving the problem," said Michael Swartwout, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. "We can now finally play to our strengths...our enthusiasm."

Freedom to fail

Universities have an inherent advantage in developing "disruptive" space systems, Swartwout contends, and that is the freedom to fail. In fact, he added, three of the six CubeSats placed in orbit in 2003 were either never contacted or failed very early.

"Experimental failure is a basic element of university life, and from the university's perspective, a failed spacecraft is not necessarily a failed mission," Swartwout said.

Swartwout explained that the tremendous reductions in the size and cost of electronics are making possible "disposable" probes that function for only weeks, but whose very low cost and short development cycle make their launch and operation affordable.

"Universities are uniquely poised to take advantage of disposable spacecraft, and such spacecraft could be used to develop 'disruptive' satellite technologies," he said.

California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo is a powerhouse in the CubeSat effort, led by Cal Poly Aerospace Engineering Professor Jordi Puig-Suari.

In April, Cal Poly hosted the first-ever CubeSat Developers' Workshop. That event brought together teams in the United States and abroad to network and collectively shoulder ways to reduce CubeSat costs and development time, and review how best to increase their access to space and turn up the volume in terms of launch rate.

In addition to overseas launches, CubeSat builders are looking to develop the capability of boosting their satellites within the United States. A campaign is in progress with all major launch providers to assess possibilities for the future.

Learn by building

Cal Poly is also home for the CubeSat deployer, the P-POD. All universities involved in the CubeSat program send their spacecraft to San Luis Obispo where Cal Poly students integrate each into the P-POD and carry out testing before transporting them to the launch site.

Things are extremely busy at Cal Poly, said Spencer Studley, PolySat Project Manager and student. The launch slated for later this year will include 14 CubeSats, he said, developed by seven teams in the United States and four groups at international universities.

The CubeSats will be stuffed within five P-PODs, each carrier device cocked and spring-loaded to deploy sets of the tiny spacecraft.

"People are learning as they are building," Studley said. "Between 40 to 50 universities are actually in the process of building CubeSats."

Studley said that universities are undertaking CubeSat work for multiple reasons: For their educational value by enhancing student engineering skills, to carrying out science data gathering or supporting a commercial space agenda.

According to Bryan Klofas, Cal Poly student and coordinator for the university's Earth station: "There are a lot of universities involved...and lots of far out ideas. You don't need a lot of money to put a satellite in orbit. Smaller is better."

Twiggs at Stanford University foresees a burgeoning role for CubeSats. Micro-thrusters could enable the spacecraft to maneuver freely in Earth orbit. New radio and solar cell technology is within reach, also making future CubeSats all the more productive.

"And look at the processors. Every time they come out we get more computing power for less power consumption," Twiggs said. The same goes with the PDA, he said, the handheld personal digital assistant.

"They are our saving grace. They didn't know it but they're building stuff for us," Twiggs added.

Like the personal computer?

Big plans are afoot for CubeSats. There is talk about flying tethers on the spacecraft, as well as toting along inflatable packages - both techniques viewed as a way to hasten a CubeSat's reentry and lessen worry about adding to already orbiting space clutter.

CubeSat innovators also envision the small spacecraft deployed from the International Space Station - chucked out of an airlock. Then there is the prospect of CubeSats toting biological or hardware experiments that reenter and parachute to Earth.

"I hope the CubeSat is like the personal computer...you don't know what the heck you're going to do with this little box when you build it or what markets will be enabled. But it's so cool, you've got to do it," Twiggs concluded.

And:

NSF Taps Tiny CubeSats for Big Space Science

**************************EXCERPT******************************

By Leonard David
Special Correspondent, SPACE.com
posted: 27 August 2008
07:00 am ET

This story was updated at 3:07 p.m. EDT.

GOLDEN, Colo. — The National Science Foundation (NSF) has launched a program to use tiny CubeSats for science missions dedicated to space weather and atmospheric research.

The Arlington, Va.-based NSF's interest in CubeSats stems from a recommendation in the June 2006 "Report of the Assessment Committee for the National Space Weather Program — an interagency initiative to speed improvement of space weather services."

One of the report's recommendations emphasized that agencies involved in space weather work should look into the feasibility of using micro-satellites with miniaturized sensors to provide cost-effective science and operational data sources for space weather applications such as: improving understanding of space weather, helping predict conditions in the space environment and measuring the physical processes that affect the state of the sun and solar wind, as well as impacts they have upon Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and upper atmosphere.

Training the next generation

The first solicitation for mission proposals in the new NSF program was issued in late February, resulting in proposals for 29 CubeSat science missions, explained Therese Moretto Jorgensen, program director in the Upper Atmospheric Research Section of NSF's Geosciences Directorate, Division of Atmospheric Sciences.

On Tuesday, the NSF selected "CubeSat-based Ground-to-Space Bistatic Radar Experiment — Radio Aurora Explorer," a collaborative space science project to be undertaken by Hasan Bahcivan of SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif. and James Cutler of the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. The selected experiment is slated to fly in December 2009.

"If anybody thought that these CubeSats would not do things ... this set of proposals just proved everybody so wrong," Jorgensen told SPACE.com. "There are a lot of questions in space weather research that are still being struggled with ... even though we've been flying satellites for many years now," she said. Furthermore, the NSF program is meant to help train the next generation of experimental space scientists and aerospace engineers, she added.

NSF organized a workshop in May 2007 to bring together elements of the small satellite community. That gathering, Jorgensen said, focused attention not only on the scientific utility of small spacecraft, but also spotlighted the prospect that CubeSats can provide training opportunities for young engineers.

That combining of science research needs and young professional development is one of NSF's strong desires, Jorgensen added. However, what also came out of last year's meeting, she said, was appreciating the scarcity of affordable launch.

Spring-loaded research

One focus of the CubeSat program is to facilitate launch of satellites as secondary payloads on existing missions using the standardized CubeSat deployment system, the Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer, or P-POD.

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Therese
.
Moretto Jorgensen

tjorgens@nsf.gov

(703) 292-8518