Design of the Alpha Cubesat: Technology Demonstration of a Chipsat-Equipped Retroreflective Light Sail
AIAA SciTech Forum 10.2514/6.2021-1254 11–15 & 19–21 January 2021, VIRTUAL EVENT AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum Design of the Alpha CubeSat: Technology Demonstration of a ChipSat-Equipped Retroreflective Light Sail Joshua S. Umansky-Castro,∗ João Maria B. Mesquita, † Avisha Kumar, ‡ Maxwell Anderson, § Tan Yaw Tung, ¶ Jenny J. Wen, ‖ V. Hunter Adams ∗∗ and Mason A. Peck †† Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14850 Andrew Filo ‡‡ 4Special Projects, Cupertino, CA, 95014 Davide Carabellese§§ Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy 10129 C Bangs ¶¶ Brooklyn, NY, 11216 Martina Mrongovius ∗∗∗ HoloCenter, Queens, NY 10004 Gregory L. Matloff ††† City Tech, Brooklyn, NY 11201 This paper provides an overview of Alpha, a rapidly developed, low-cost CubeSat mission to verify the performance of a highly retroreflective material for light-sail propulsion. Designed, integrated, and tested by students of the Space Systems Design Studio at Cornell University, this mission demonstrates a number of key technologies that enable next-generation capabilities for space exploration. In particular, this paper focuses on the novel application of ChipSats (gram scale spacecraft-on-a-chip technology) as a means of verifying Alpha’s sail orbit and attitude dynamics. Other innovations include an entirely 3D-printed structure to enable quick and inexpensive prototyping, an onboard Iridium modem that bypasses the need for ground- station radio equipment, retroreflective sail material that provides more deterministic thrust from laser illumination, and an attitude-control subsystem that provides full attitude and angular-rate control using magnetorquers only. In addition to these near-term technology demonstrations, Alpha is among the first exhibitions of holography in space, a medium that shows longer-term promise in several roles for interstellar travel.
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