A cubesat satellite constellation providing internet access. http://www.parabolicarc.com/2015/03/14/uksa-clyde-space-provide-global-broadband-cubesats/
New company claims to be have new cubesat scale electric propulsion ready. It seems that MIT iEPS (ion Electrospray Propulsion System) is ready for commercialization. Here is the company web http://www.accion-systems.com/.The founders came from MIT iEPS project - http://web.mit.edu/aeroastro/labs/spl/research_ieps.htmTo be honest, their approach seems to be better suited for attitude control applications than main propulsion. But they really impressed me with their fuel - non-toxic, liquid ionic liquid. The main advantage is that is is very easy to get ions, so no "heating stage" is needed. Thus the "engine" is very compact. Their initial unit (MAX-1) has 2000s ISP, 0.2U form factor, 5W input power, 60% efficiency, 120uN thrust.
Solarsails and cubesat.http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/%7Efiso/telecon/Johnson_3-25-15/
I've edited it, try again.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 03/26/2015 07:35 amI've edited it, try again.It still tells me access denied, my IP is outside of the US is that an issue?
Finally listened to this podcast about solar sails. At end the presenter mentioned couple of future technologies. 1) lite weight flexible solar panels/sails that could produce 100s watts for a cubesat.2) use a solar sail as solar concentrator for the cubesat solar panels. Both of these would be ideal for cubesat missions going to outer planets eg Jupiter.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 03/27/2015 01:28 amFinally listened to this podcast about solar sails. At end the presenter mentioned couple of future technologies. 1) lite weight flexible solar panels/sails that could produce 100s watts for a cubesat.2) use a solar sail as solar concentrator for the cubesat solar panels. Both of these would be ideal for cubesat missions going to outer planets eg Jupiter.As someone that has been advocating the use of large solar concentrators with solar cells designed for concentrated sunlight (as opposed to the one foot dia. or so concentrators currently used with such cells on some comsats) for over a decade, it is very gratifying to hear that someone is finally proposing this.Concentrator cells have achieved over 40% efficiency at up to 900 Suns so the total power available to a cubesat might be even higher than thought. A 32 sq. meter concentrator might not have much more mass than the solar sail mentioned above - particularly since a few hundred Suns is less difficult to achieve than the thousands of Suns for solar furnaces. A concentrator of this size and 90% reflectivity would focus about 11.7 KW thermal in LEO and at 40% efficiency concentrator PV would produce nearly 4.7 KW elec. although a cooling system would be needed. Concentrator mass can be further reduced as can solar sail mass by cutting holes smaller than the wavelength of visible light to cut their mass by perhaps a factor of ten. Even current tech at 17 KW/kg thermal is competitive with nuclear at Saturn's distance IMO.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 08/24/2014 08:15 amAnother video on Michigan Engineering's CAT plasma thruster. With 7 kg payload a 6U cubesat can reach Jupiter in 3yrs from C3 for <$10M per cubesat. This is why planetary scientists are very interested/excited by the advances in smallsat and cubesat technology. Looks like the CAT will fly first half of 2015. http://www.projectaether.org/main/space/mission.html
Another video on Michigan Engineering's CAT plasma thruster. With 7 kg payload a 6U cubesat can reach Jupiter in 3yrs from C3 for <$10M per cubesat. This is why planetary scientists are very interested/excited by the advances in smallsat and cubesat technology.
Power generation may turn out to be the biggest issue in flying Cubesats far out, as many of the other problems could be solved by just adding more power! (insert Jeremy Clarkson joke here).It gets also very cold and cubesat shape (10cm cube at least) contains too little structure to retain heat. Could get too cold very quickly in malfunction situations.There are solutions, though.
Use of propulsion systems and other factors will force some developers to move to a 9U configuration, which I call a "FlatSat".