Microsats and CubeSats have become very popular classes of spacecraft in the last few years, as they have shown their potential as cheap and flexible tools for educational purposes, in-orbit validation and even for the provision of commercial services in the fields of Earth observation and IoT.
Most of these satellites have been deployed in low earth orbit, however there’s a big interest in using these very compact systems for the exploration of the solar system either as a secondary payload of bigger missions or as a stand-alone ones.
The perspective of using CubeSats or microsats for exploration is appealing because - if a mission is designed properly - it is possible to perform good science with very little risk and lower costs and development times. However, there are several challenges that need to be overcome: these platforms have intrinsic limits in terms of power, propulsion capabilities, redundancies and also the standard design approach which foresees an extensive use of COTS components and reduced testing campaigns is not robust enough for this type of missions.
After the first missions beyond LEO with CubeSats, such as the Italian-led ArgoMoon and LICIACube or the secondary payloads launched in the frame of Artemis-1 and Insight, it is now possible to draw a first balance of the potential of this approach and the gaps that still need to be filled. The goal of this symposium is to present the current status of this kind of missions and the perspectives in the near a long term.
20/03/2023