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NASA plots interplanetary cubesat swarms

Lots of small, cheap probes can tell us more than one big, expensive, probe

NASA has revealed it is working on CubeSat Application for Planetary Entry Missions (CAPE), a plan to use small satellites to explore the solar system.

As Lori Keesey of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center details, cubesats are proving very useful around Earth. So useful that the 10cmx10cmx10cm craft could be used to explore the planets.

The idea is build “a service module that would propel the spacecraft to its celestial target and a separate planetary entry probe.” The probe would be lodged inside a Micro-Reentry Capsule (MIRCA).

Here's how NASA thinks this plays out:

Under his concept, the CAPE/MIRCA spacecraft, including the service module and entry probe, would weigh less than 11 pounds (4.9 kilograms) and measure no more than 4 inches (10.1 centimeters) on a side. After being ejected from a canister housed by its mother ship, the tiny spacecraft would unfurl its miniaturized solar panels or operate on internal battery power to begin its journey to another planetary body.

Once it reached its destination, the sensor-loaded entry vehicle would separate from its service module and begin its descent through the target’s atmosphere. It would communicate atmospheric pressure, temperature, and composition data to the mother ship, which then would transmit the information back to Earth.

Aside from being cheap, this idea has been deemed worth testing because “scientists could conceivably launch multiple spacecraft for multi-point sampling — a capability currently not available with single planetary probes that are the NASA norm today.”

NASA will conduct a test of MIRCA “this summer” that will see a prototype vehicle “dropped from the balloon gondola at an altitude of about 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) to test the design’s aerodynamic stability and operational concept.”

The test dummy is expected to hit Mach 1 on the way down, which should give boffins a chance to give their plans a thoroughly unpleasant experience with which to test the viability of this idea. ®

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