New opportunities offered by Cubesats for space research in Latin America: The SUCHAI project case
Introduction
Since the Sputnik changed history in 1957 by being the first artificial satellite launched into space, research and technology in these areas continues to evolve. In the early years of space missions everything was developed for the sole purpose of military information and with huge budgets (Peter, 2006). However, by the end of the cold war a new principle was established: “Faster, Better, Cheaper” (Watzin, 1999), where the premise was to reduce the developing time as well as to design, construct and launch satellites by using commercial parts. Despite its simplicity, this idea had great impact on space projects. However, even with this philosophy in mind, emphasis was still placed on the vehicle instead of the payloads or instruments. In that sense the vehicles (satellites and rockets) needed to adapt to the best possible payload with the longest possible operational time. More recently, an international trend has emerged, related to the standardization and use of very small satellites (nano-, pico- and femto-satellites) in space science, where the Cubesat standard dominates. Initially conceived in 1999 as an educational tool (first launched in 2003), in less than a decade the Cubesat standard has become suitable for space research. Beyond the small size, the main philosophical change is, that in this approach, emphasis is placed on the payload, and thus the payload has to adapt to standardized vehicles (Cubesats and piggyback deployment systems). This produces a huge reduction of the costs/time of manufacturing and launching a satellite which are by far the most expensive part of the space research endeavor. The utility of Cubesats as scientific research and technology validation platforms is now increasingly recognized (Jones, 2014). The new capability offered by the Cubesat is promising to catapult the interest and collaboration of Latin America in space research (Woellert et al., 2011). The miniaturization trend has also revitalized the concepts of PCB- and Chip-Sat, satellites that fall into the femto-satellite category ( kg) (Barnhart et al., 2009, Manchester et al., 2013). This trend could facilitate a massive space sensing network concept at very low budgets.
Latin America has not been indifferent to this development and some Cubesat projects have already been launched. Colombia was the pioneer in this area with its Libertad I 1U Cubesat launched in 2007 (Woellert et al., 2011), and other countries/missions followed. These include Ecuador with NEE 1 and 2 (launched in 2012 and 2013); Peru with PUCPSAT, launched in 2013 and CHASQUI UNI (Canales et al., 2010), launched in 2014; Brazil with NanoSatC-Br1 launched in 2014 (Vargas-Cuentas and Roman-Gonzalez, 2014); and Uruguay with AntelSat in 2014 (Tassano et al., 2014). Argentina has also launched a couple of Cubesats as a private–public initiative. There is a larger list of Cubesat projects currently holding for launch and/or under development. This is the case for the first Chilean Cubesat project, the Satellite of the University of Chile for Aerospace Investigation (SUCHAI). This project is the seed to a much longer program at the University of Chile, which will be carried out by the Space and Planetary Exploration Laboratory (SPEL). Our main objective, as a research group, is to explore the possibilities that this standard can offer to countries with limited budget for space research in order to enhance this area in Latin America.
The SUCHAI project consists of a 1 unit (1U) Cubesat already scheduled to be launched in mid 2016. Two more Cubesats have been approved within the Laboratory for construction during the next three years. The second and third Cubesats will be 3-unit (3U) Cubesats. With these coming missions, we expect to contribute in space modeling by combining in situ measurements, made with nano-satellites, and ground-based instruments, which will lead to better magnetospheric/ionospheric parameter estimation. Our group has experienced the huge opportunities this standard can offer in the fields of education, technology development and science. This is true in particular for space, which could be of special relevance for groups and countries without much history/experience in satellite technology. In the following sections, we describe some of the achievements and grounds of our space program.
Section snippets
SUCHAI project
SUCHAI is a 1U ( cm3) Cubesat, developed at the SPE Laboratory. The program started in 2011 with a budget close to USD 200 K, which included setting up the Laboratory, salary of an engineer, construction of 1U Cubesat, vibration and thermal tests, and the launch. The SUCHAI Cubesat carries (1) a simple Langmuir probe, (2) a small camera, (3) an electronics-in–hostile-environment experiment and (4) a battery health management experiment. It also contains monitoring tests for other
Research focused on Cubesat platform
The space vehicle is a relevant driver of technology research. Studying and developing new technology/techniques might facilitate other applications of Cubesats in the near future. In this section, we present a discussion of the motivation of the platform research of our coming projects.
Research focused on space physics
In addition to technology research, the Cubesat standard offers many possibilities within science. The world is actively working in a number of research areas related to the geosciences (Selva and Krejci, 2012), astronomy, microgravity, space biology and of course space physics (Bahcivan et al., 2014, Jones, 2014). In particular, SPEL is focusing on two topics within space research: microgravity experiments and instrumentation and science for Earth’s magnetosphere-ionosphere. In the following
Magnetospheric/ionospheric research
Ionospheric instabilities and irregularities are manifestations of complicated phenomena that involve the Sun-Earth relationship. Although, space science has evolved greatly over the last several decades, the current state of understanding and forecasting is still limited. As our technological society grows increasingly connected and reliant on space-based communication and navigation systems, a growing number of users are susceptible to transionospheric signal degradation. Models of the
Conclusion
We have presented and dicussed the SUCHAI project grounds and scientific motivations. The desired following steps and the designed path were also discussed in this article. We presented, to the best of our knowledge, a summary of the current efforts made for different groups around the world to increase the performance of instruments for space research, such as Langmuir probes, magnetometers, TEC systems and microgravity/hard environment platforms. All of these approaches can be used within
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank to Topical Editor Peggy Ann Shea and the two anonymous referees for their help in evaluating and improving this paper. The SUCHAI project has been supported by University of Chile, in particular the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. The Surfaces and nano-materials Laboratory of the Physics Department at FCFM and the Fab Lab 851-FCFM deserve special thanks for their strong support with the SPEL’s program. The program has also been financially
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