The game changer for space exploration in coming decades will be self-assembly, enabling the growth of a new and invigorating paradigm in which multiple smallsat sailcraft launched as ‘rideshare’ payloads augment huge ‘flagship’ missions. Self-assembly allows formation-flying smallsats to emerge enroute as larger, fully capable craft carrying complex payloads to target. The case for this grows out of Slava Turyshev and team’s work at JPL as they refine the conceptual design for a mission to the solar gravitational lens at 550 AU and beyond. The advantages are patent, including lower cost, fast transit times and full capability at destination.

Aspects of this paradigm are beginning to be explored in the literature, as I’ve been reminded by Alex Tolley, who forwarded an interesting paper out of the University of Padua (Italy). Drawing on an international team, lead author Giovanni Santi explores the use of CubeSat-scale spacecraft driven by sail technologies, in this case ‘lightsails’ pushed by a laser array. Self-assembly does not figure into the discussion in this paper, but the focus on smallsats and sails fits nicely with the concept, and extends the discussion of how to maximize data return from distant targets in the Solar System.

The key to the Santi paper is swarm technologies, numerous small sailcraft placed into orbits that allow planetary exploration as well as observations of the heliosphere. We’re talking about payloads in the range of 1 kg each, and the intent of the paper is to explore onboard systems (telecommunications receives particular attention), the fabrication of the sail and its stability, and the applications such systems can offer. As you would imagine, the work draws for its laser concepts on the Starlight program pursued for NASA by Philip Lubin and the ongoing Breakthrough Starshot project.

Image: NASA’s Starling mission is one early step toward developing swarm capabilities. The mission will demonstrate technologies to enable multipoint science data collection by several small spacecraft flying in swarms. The six-month mission will use four CubeSats in low-Earth orbit to test four technologies that let spacecraft operate in a synchronized manner without resources from the ground. Credit: NASA Ames.

The authors argue that ground-based direct energy laser propulsion, with its benefits in terms of modularity and scalability, is the baseline technology needed to make small sailcraft exploration of the Solar System a reality. Thus there is a line of development which extends from early missions to targets like Mars, with accompanying reductions in the power needed (as opposed to interstellar missions like Breakthrough Starshot), and correspondingly, fewer demands on the laser array.

The paper specifically does not analyze close-pass perihelion maneuvers at the Sun of the sort examined by the JPL team, which assumes no need for a ground-based array. I think the ‘Sundiver’ maneuver is the missing piece in the puzzle, and will come back to it in a moment.

Breakthrough Starshot envisions a flyby of a planetary system like Proxima Centauri, but the missions contemplated here, much closer to home, must find a way to brake at destination in cases where extended planetary science is going to be performed. Thus we lose the benefit of purely sail-based propulsion (no propellant aboard) in favor of carrying enough propulsive mass to make the needed maneuvers at, say, Mars:

…the spacecraft could be ballistically captured in a highly irregular orbit, which requires at least an high thrust maneuver to stabilize the orbit itself and to reduce the eccentricity…The velocity budget has been estimated using GMAT suite to be ?v ? 900?1400 m s?1, depending on the desired final orbit eccentricity and altitude. A chemical thruster with about 3 N thrust would allow to perform a sufficiently fast maneuver. In this scenario, the mass of the nanosatellite is estimated to be increased by a wet mass of 5 kg; moreover, an increase of the mass of reaction wheels needs to be taken into account given the total mass increment.

Even so, swarms of nanosatellites allow a reduction of the payload mass of each individual spacecraft, with the added benefit of redundancy and the use of off-the-shelf components. The authors dwell on the lightsail itself, noting the basic requirement that it be thermally and mechanically stable during acceleration, no small matter when propelling a sail out of Earth orbit through a high-power laser beam. Although layered sails and sails using nanostructures, metamaterials that can optimize heat dissipation and promote stability, are an area of active research, this paper works with a thin film design that reduces complexity and offers lower costs.

We wind up with simulations involving a sail made of titanium dioxide with a radius of 1.8 m (i.e. a total area of 10 m2) and a thickness of 1 µm. The issue of turbulence in the atmosphere, a concern for Breakthrough Starshot’s ground-based laser array, is not considered in this paper, but the authors note the need to analyze the problem in the next iteration of their work along with close attention to laser alignment, which can cause problems of sail drifting and spinning or even destroy the sail.

But does the laser have to be on the Earth’s surface? We’ve had this discussion before, noting the political problem of a high-power laser installation in Earth orbit, but the paper notes a third possibility, the surface of the Moon. A long-term prospect, to be sure, but one having the advantage of lack of atmosphere, and perhaps placement on the Moon’s far side could one day offer a politically acceptable solution. It’s an intriguing thought, but if we’re thinking of the near term, the fastest solution seems to be the Breakthrough Starshot choice of a ground-based facility on Earth.

What we have here, then, could be described as a scaled-down laser concept, a kind of Breakthrough Starshot ‘lite’ that focuses on lower levels of laser power, larger payloads (even though still in the nanosatellite range), and targets as close as Mars, where swarms of sail-driven spacecraft might construct the communications network for a colony on the surface. A larger target would be exploration of the heliosphere:

…in this last mission scenario the nanosatellites would be radially propelled without the need of further orbital maneuvers. To date, the interplanetary environment, and in particular the heliospheric plasma, is only partially known due to the few existing opportunities for carrying out in-situ measurements, basically linked to scientific exploration missions [76]. The composition and characteristics of the heliospheric plasma remain defined mainly through theoretical models only partially verified. Therefore, there is an urgent need to perform a more detailed mapping of the heliospheric environment especially due to the growth of the human activities in space.

Image: An artist’s concept of ESA’s Swarm mission being deployed. This image was taken from a 2015 workshop on formation flying satellites held at Technische Universiteit Delft in the Netherlands. Extending the swarm paradigm to smallsats and nanosatellites is one step toward future robotic self-assembly. Credit: TU Delft.

Spacecraft operating in swarms optimized for the study of the heliosphere offer tantalizing possibilities in terms of data return. But I think the point that emerges here is flexibility, the notion that coupling a beamed propulsion system to smallsats and nanosats offers a less expensive, modular way to explore targets previously within reach only by expensive flagship missions. I’ll also argue that a large, ground-based laser array is aspirational but not essential to push this paradigm forward.

Issues of self-assembly and sail design are under active study, as is the question of thermal survival for operations close to the Sun. We should continue to explore close solar passes and ‘sundiver’ maneuvers to shorten transit times to targets both relatively near or as far away as the Kuiper Belt. We need test missions to firm up sail materials and operations, even as we experiment with self-assembly of smallsats into larger craft capable of complex operations at target. The result is a modular fleet that can make fast flybys of distant targets or assemble for orbital operations where needed.

The paper is Santi et al., “Swarm of lightsail nanosatellites for Solar System exploration,” available as a preprint.

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