*NanoSpacecrafts. An Illustrated Overview* is an initiative by *theoverview* project, a discovery journey into the new horizons of human species, trying to contribute an overview of our brave new world. theoverview is a cultural project in search of insights to understand and thrive in the times we live in, making sense of an uncertain world. The 10 years ahead of us can be defining of our civilization and our lifes. The 2020s is a make-or-break time. We live in a critical moment in human history. In this context, the evolution of our species towards a spacefaring civilization is our overview.

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June 30th 2020. theoverview team

NANOSPACECRAFTS. An Illustrated Overview—Presentation

 

 

ASTERIA
The Quest for Wandering Stars Beyond The Solar System

August 14th, 2020

Even if the word “planet” has meant many different things over the millennia and evenstill its definition is still evolving (Pluto!), their most accepted etymology is “wandering star” (from ancient greek asters planetai). The movements of the planets across the sky are the key for their detection and characterization. In ancient times, early cultures worldwide, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known as planets because they could be seen from the naked eye. Astronomical telescope invention broadened horizons and led to further discoveries; finally Uranus, Neptune and Pluto completed the list of solar system's planets. With the 21st century, the quest for planets expanded beyond solar system. Currently extrasolar planets, the exoplanets, are being discovered around distant stars. One of the more used techniques for the detection of exoplanets is the transit method, One of the more used techniques for the detection of exoplanets is the transit method, the one that uses ASTERIA. “If a planet crosses (or transits) in front of its parent star's disk, then the observed brightness of the star drops by a small amount. The amount by which the star dims depends on its size and on the size of the planet, among other factors. Because the transit method requires that the planet's orbit intersect a line-of-sight between the host star and Earth, the probability that an exoplanet in a randomly oriented orbit will be observed to transit the star is somewhat small.” It is not surprising that ASTERIA has been awarded for the extraordinary achievement of detecting an exoplanet with the resources of a nanosatellite.

Launch date: August 14, 2017
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 43020
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1998-067NH
Aplication: Astrophysics Research
Configuration: 6U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Telescope Science

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ASTERIA
A Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics

August 14th, 2020

By detecting Planet Janssen, or 55 Cancri e (41 light years away), ASTERIA far surpassed the expectations and opened the field of exoplanet detection “to ever-smaller telescopes on ever-smaller satellites.” The Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research In Astrophysics (ASTERIA) continued the prior and cancelled Exoplanet mission to search for new exoplanet transits around stars. ASTERIA achieved an incredible pointing stability to an exoplanet better than 0.5 arcseconds and thermal stability of 0.01ºC!!! So the ASTERIA mission “demonstrated a significant improvement in the capability of small satellites” (Small Satellite Mission of the 2018 Year Award). A truly successful testimony of the viability of cutting-edge astrophysics in CubeSats.

Launch date: August 14, 2017
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 43020
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1998-067NH
Aplication: Astrophysics Research
Configuration: 6U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Telescope Science

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LIGHTSAIL 2
Sailing the Skies

July 23rd, 2020

A vessel that ride through the sky powered solely by heavenly breeze made true; that's Lightsail 2. In a 1610 letter to Galileo Galilei (Conversation with the Star Messenger), Johannes Kepler already wrote that the humans might one day use the technology to set a course for the stars: “Provide ships or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will brave even that void.” The solar sails (also called light sails or photon sails) are a way of propelling a probe through space using radiation pressure exerted by sunlight photons on a mirror-like reflective surface (in this case 4 triangular Mylar sails that are just 4.5 microns thick), without the current chemical rockets that burn fuel that the spacecraft carries on board. As The Planetary Society explained “With solar sails, a spacecraft can continue accelerating as long as there is light pushing on it. Within a solar system, sunlight can continuously push on the sail, accelerating the spacecraft throughout its entire voyage. This means that solar sail-propelled spacecraft can reach speeds that would be practically impossible for chemical rockets to achieve.”

Launch date: June 25, 2019
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 99999
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2019-102B
Aplication: Technology Demonstration
Configuration: 3U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat SolarSail Technology

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LIGHTSAIL 2
Controlled Solar Sail Flight

July 23rd, 2020

A new way to travel space: LightSail, solar sail project from The Planetary Society, crowdfunded by 23,331 Kickstarter backers, becomed the first spacecraft in Earth orbit propelled solely by sunlight, and that raised its orbit with solar sailing. Deployed from the Prox-1 CubeSat. To measure change in orbit due to solar sailing, LightSail 2 had a small cluster of mirrors on the bottom of CubeSat allowing lasers on the ground to precisely measure the spacecraft's orbit. The lightsail was deployed successfully on July 23, 2019.

Launch date: June 25, 2019
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 99999
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2019-102B
Aplication: Technology Demonstration
Configuration: 3U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat SolarSail Technology

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SPOOQY-1
We Are Entangled Together

July 2nd, 2020

“We are all different nationals, we are entangled together with all the races.” This is engrave onto the outside of SpooQy-1, into an interstage panel—a 10cm by 3cm plate of aluminum that forms part of the standard structure of the cubesat. It is a quote from The Golden Record 2.0, a kind of time capsule intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials, which is carried on both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft.

Launch date: June 17, 2019
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 44332
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1998-067QH
Aplication: Technology Demonstration
Configuration: 3U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Quantum Technology

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SPOOQY-1
CubeSat for Quantum Communication

July 2nd, 2020

This CubeSat mission test ultra-secure quantum communication technology, that could form the basis of a new global telecommunication system and the quantum internet. It did so by demonstrating quantum entanglement and quantum key distribution. On July 2, 2019 satellite's scientific instrument switched on and started making entangled signals in orbit. The SpooQy-1 mission builds on a previous mission in 2015, Galassia. A third mission, QKD Qubesat, will build on the results of SpooQy-1, working towards CubeSat-to-ground quantum communications for sharing secret encryption keys across the planet.

Launch date: June 17, 2019
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 44332
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 1998-067QH
Aplication: Technology Demonstration
Configuration: 3U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat Quantum Technology

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CUBESATS
The Open Source Democratization of Space

June 30th, 2020

The inspiration for the original model for CubeSat was… a plastic Beanie Baby box! The cube form is the most practical: without an attitude stabilization on the satellite, you have to have solar cells on all sides. And the most reduced size (at the epoch), was a 10-centimeter cube, to obtain a minimum of energy to power the spacecraft. Once in the hands of students, they filled this tiny spacecrafts with technologies and components of smartphones and microelectronics, repurposed in a creative way for their space missions. As Bob Twiggs put it, “It all started as a university education program satellite.” The question was: How to do something that students could afford during their master’s degree, in a period of about two years, to launch for a reasonable price? At the time, nor NASA nor any military organization nor aerospace industry had not interest and not funded the low cost alternative!!! Bob commented “I’m kind of glad that NASA didn’t help us, or we’d probably never got it done. It was developed for the education of students.” For its part, Jordi Puig-Suari gave a lecture with the self-explanatory title ‘CubeSat: An Unlikely Success Story,’ and recently stated “I think DIY projects are going to be the next step in the democratization of space.”

Launch date: June 30, 2003
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 27848 (OSCAR 57)
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2003-031J
Aplication: Technology, Amateur radio
Configuration: 1U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat OpenSource COTS

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CUBESATS
The New Space Revolution

June 30th, 2020

Recognized as a key piece of the New Space revolution, this tiny spacecrafts have revolutionized the Space Age, opening the democratization of space access, and challenging the traditional ways of space exploration. Created in 1999 by Bob Twiggs and Jordi Puig-Suari, CubeSat open-source standard is acclaimed today as the biggest thing in satellites since Sputnik! CubeSat spacecraft is a 10 cm cube with a mass of up to 1.33 kg, scalable from one to several units ("one unit" or "1U", 2U, 3U…) The first mission was a multiple launch of 6 CubeSats using a Rokot-KM rocket, a remake of the old SS-19 Stiletto soviet intercontinental ballistic missile. The CubeSats were: AAU-Cubesat Aalborg University Cubesat (DK), CanX 1 Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiments (CA), CUTE 1 CUbical Tokyo institute of technology Engineering satellite (JP), DTUSat Danmarks Tekniske Universitet Satellite (DK), QuakeSat (USA) and XI-IV (JP). One of them, the CubeSat XI-IV (Sai Four), the OSCAR 57, is still active. The name "XI" (X-factor Investigator) derives from its cubic shape (XI means domino in Japanese)

Launch date: June 30, 2003
Satellite Catalog No: NORAD ID 27848 (OSCAR 57)
Int'l Designator: COSPAR 2003-031J
Aplication: Technology, Amateur radio
Configuration: 1U
Tags: Space Nanosatellite CubeSat OpenSource COTS

> Acquire NFT: CUBESATS. The New Space Revolution

NANOSPACECRAFTS
An Illustrated Overview

June 30th, 2020

The dawn of a new era. Nanosatellites are a game changer in the space exploration. Shrinking spacecrafts make possible space for everyone, change the way of learning by doing, offers a suitable platform for technology innovation, creates new tools for doing science and contribute to critical infrastructures for everyday life. Smaller satellites means low cost, reduced times for design and construction, testing more risky and disruptive options, faster test-and-error times, new functionalities. At first, nanosatellites were used on education and technology, but now they are also doing science in space. Orbit Earth makes possible planetary overview and solutions. And nanosatellites are changing the way we collect information in space; using a swarm of them can give simultaneous and more wide measurements. The next generation will be truly fleets of nanoprobes, acting in unison, synchronously. But nanosatellites are no more limited to orbit Earth. We are seeing the beginning of solar system exploration with this nanoprobes; even beyond, to the stars. This is a document about this thrilling history. 2020’s are a make-or-break time in which nanosapcecrafts can make a difference.

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