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Mind the Gap: Can CubeSats Fill the Data Deficit?
07 March 2010
From the monitoring of our planet's climate, to the collection of data for tracking shipping containers on the ground, there are currently significant gaps in the ability to collect data. The reason for this data deficit is mainly for three main reasons:
1) The cost of deploying the necessary spacecraft is restrictive,
2) The current space infrastructure provides a limited or insufficient revisit period to the area of interest
3) The time between identifying the need for the data and the deployment of the spacecraft to retrieve the data results in a gap of, in most cases, years where no data is collected.
I believe this is another area where CubeSats have the potential to provide a vital role for space efforts; in this case it is a gap filling capability.
A recent of example of how CubeSats could be helping with monitoring climate change is the launch failure of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). At roughly the same time as this failure, the University of Toronto launch CanX-2, a CubeSat carrying an atmospheric spectrometer to measure greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, the measuremens gathered by this experiment are not exactly what is required by the sciencists waiting on the OCO data, but if there had been a clear requirement to tailor the CanX-2 experiment to supply a data set that would be useful to that scientific community, we would already be able to start analysing data and, more importantly, use this data to look for trends up to and after the launch of an OCO replacement spacecraft.
CubeSats have been mostly used in University projects, giving students practical experience designing and testing hardware for space. However, the world is now waking up to the increasing utility value of CubeSats; the improvements to CubeSat systems to increase performance and reliability to a level required for commercial level Earth Observation and telecoms are already in development if not launch ready. Once the technology for advanced commercial CubeSats is realised (and we are talking months not years for this to happen), there is a very compelling case for the use of CubeSats to provide fast response science and commercial platforms in order to complement the more 'conventional' mission spacecraft.- 2. At Mon Mar 29 21:17:29 +0100 2010 Craig Clark wrote:
I agree. Early engagement is essential, but how to engage at the early stages is the issue. Many of the civil space agencies do not take CubeSats seriously enough to consider them; ESA is a prime example of this. I suspect that it will be a few more years and a few more successful, high profile CubeSat science missions before we see the turn around that we need to get CubeSats and CubeSat size spacecraft being considered seriously for science.
You have to applaud the National Science Foundation for their vision and uptake of CubeSat technology. They have clearly recognised the value in investing in the enthusiasm of the CubeSat community and backing organic progression of space technology in general. Perhaps some of the institutional space agencies could learn from this - they can't expect to lead the horse to water AND make it drink, afterall. Markets just don't behave that way; even ones as small as the space market.
- 3. At Thu Aug 26 19:24:15 +0100 2010 communication essays wrote:
Thanks for sharing this wonderful blog.
Could not agree more. Cubesats are not a panacea, nor will they completely (ever) displace traditional large monolithic satellites. Cubesats are yet another element of the space segment portfolio for academia, government and industry. Over time innovation and continued resource allocation will improve the utility returned from cubesats and I believe they will become a permanent fixture of the space enterprise.
My only comment after many conversations on the topic with space scientists through my graduate program at the Space Policy Institute in Washington D.C. is to ensure early engagement with the end-customer when developing mission requirements, roadmaps,etc. One theme I hear often is some cubesat related initiatives are being developed with a nominal science objective but the underlying motivation is demonstrating a "cool" technology or engineering feat for its own sake. If the mission goal is about science, then the engineering and technology should be an enabler to achieve the science objective. If the mission goal is technology validation then that fact must be clearly acknowledged and marketed to the larger community. If a science payload comes along for the ride in the latter case, that's great. In the former case, early engagement with the science community is a necessity. During that process if it becomes clear a cubesat is not the optimal approach- then so be it.
In any event I'm very optimistic and bullish on cubesats and am very happy to see a number of startup and small firms such as ClydeSpace pioneering this new technology.