Exploring our Solar System with cubesats and nanosats

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is NASA’s lead center for robotic exploration of our solar system. We are known for our large, flagship missions, such as Voyager, which gave humanity its first close look at Jupiter and Saturn; and the Mars Rovers, which have excited millions worldwide with their daring landing exploits. Less familiar to those outside NASA may be our role in developing the Kepler mission, which has discovered more than 2000 planets around other stars; or the recently launched Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission, one of many JPL Earth Science missions. A recent JPL initiative has emphasized low cost missions that use rapidly evolving technology developed for cubesats and nanosats to explore our solar system. Costs are significantly lower (by one or two orders of magnitude) than for conventional JPL missions, and development time is also significantly shorter. At present 21 such cubesat flight projects are under way at the laboratory with various partners: some in flight, some in development, some in advanced formulation. Four are planned as deep space missions. To succeed in exploring deep space cubesat/nanosat missions have to address several challenges: the more severe radiation environment, communications and navigation at a distance, propulsion, and packaging of instruments that can return valuable science into a compact volume/mass envelope. Instrument technologies, including cameras, magnetometers, spectrometers, radiometers, and even radars are undergoing miniaturization to fit on these smaller platforms. Other key technologies are being matured for smallsats and nanosats in deep space, including micro-electric propulsion, compact radio (and optical) communications, and onboard data reduction. This paper will describe missions that utilize these developments including the first two deep space cubesats (INSPIRE), planned for launch in 2017; the first pair of cubesats to be sent to another planet (MARCO), manifested with the InSight Mars lander launch in March of 2016; a helicopter “drone” on Mars to extend the reach of future rovers; plans for a Lunar Flashlight mission to shine a light on the permanently shadowed craters of the Moon’s poles; a Near Earth Asteroid cubesat mission; and a cubesat constellation to demonstrate time series measurements of storm systems on Earth. From these beginnings, the potential for cubesats and nanosats to add to our knowledge of the solar system could easily grow exponentially. Imagine if every deep space mission carried one or more cubesats that could operate independently (even for a brief period) on arrival at their target body. At only incremental additional cost, such spacecraft could go closer, probe deeper, and provide science measurements that we would not risk with the host spacecraft. This paper will describe examples including a nanosat to probe the composition of Venus’ atmosphere, impactors and close flybys of Europa, lunar probes, and soft landers for the moons of Mars. Low cost access to deep space also offers the potential for independent cubesat/nanosat missions – allowing us to characterize the population of near Earth asteroids for example, deploy a constellation around Venus, or take closer looks at the asteroid belt.