Cubesats Queue up for Deep-Space Rides

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fire modeller at the Open University in Milton cultivation and livestock. But once the humid- Morton and Randerson are tracking and map- Keynes, UK. ity drops and the vegetation dries out, those ping fires there using infrared measurements The European Centre for Medium-Range agricultural fires can run wild. collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, plans to Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors aboard

MARIO TAMA/GETTY soon make public its prototype system to fore- READY TO BURN NASA’s Terra satellite. The device has detected cast fire risk about six weeks in advance, and The likelihood that this will happen increases almost 12,500 fires in the Mato Grosso region the centre’s modellers are working to include as the dry season wears on, but scientists can of Brazil this year alone — making 2016 the fire risk in their seasonal forecasts. Florian already see El Niño’s impacts. Morton and third-worst year in the MODIS record, which Pappenberger, who heads the centre’s work on Randerson’s team analysed rainfall measure- stretches back to 2003. extreme-weather forecasting, says that the sta- ments from gauges In the Amazon, the question now is whether tistical approach used by Morton and Rander- “All of these and satellites dur- Atlantic storm systems will bring much- son is solid and can serve as an independent processes are ing the rainy sea- needed relief during the dry season. Morton check on model forecasts, which come with contributing son, and used data and Randerson have identified a link between their own uncertainties. Forecasts for water to both the from NASA’s Grav- Atlantic hurricanes and Amazon fires: when availability in rivers, reservoirs and agricul- building up of ity Recovery and the tropical Atlantic is warm, cyclones are tural systems operate in such a manner today. fuels and the Climate Experiment more likely to form, and those cyclones pull “I don’t think one method replaces the moisture level.” (GRACE) satellites to the rain bands that often flow into the Ama- other,” he says. “I expect that merging both provide an estimate zon northwards. The US National Oceanic will be quite beneficial.” of the cumulative water storage on land — in and Atmospheric Administration’s hurricane However, whether forests actually go up in soils, aquifers and rivers — going into the dry forecast currently calls for a neutral season, but smoke depends on a host of factors, including season. Randerson says that the situation in the tropical Atlantic has been cooling, which law-enforcement and fire-suppression efforts the Amazon is worse than it was during the bodes well for the Amazon. that vary from region to region. For instance, major droughts of 2005 and 2010 and on par “If there were to be a shift in north Atlantic almost all fires in the Amazon are started by with 1998, after the last major El Niño. sea-surface temperatures, that could short cir- landowners clearing fields and forests for As well as forecasting risk in the Amazon, cuit this fire forecast,” Morton says. ■

SPACE moon. Scientists think that Europa could harbour life under its icy surface. Lone deep-space CubeSat missions are also on the horizon. NASA has developed a min- CubeSats queue up iature radio-communication system capable of talking directly to Earth from Mars and beyond. The agency will test the system on for deep-space rides INSPIRE — which has a side-mission of map- ping interactions between Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind — and on Mars Cube Tiny craft face a wait to be propelled beyond Earth’s orbit. One (MarCO), twin communication satellites scheduled to fly on the InSight mission to BY ELIZABETH GIBNEY find a ride,” says Anthony Freeman, who man- Mars when it launches in 2018 after a two-year ages the Innovation Foundry at NASA’s Jet delay. NASA has also developed tiny, cold-gas ubeSats — spacecraft built from Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. firing thrusters for propulsion, and radiation- 10-centimetre-sided cubes, often with CubeSats were originally conceived as a resistant electronics that can survive beyond off-the-shelf parts — are already ubiq- teaching tool in 1999. Today, they carry out both the protection of Earth’s magnetic field. Cuitous in near-Earth orbit, doing everything commercial missions and near-space science. Meanwhile, firms in Europe are developing from Earth observation to studies of bacterial But deep space poses a much bigger challenge high-efficiency ion engines, and a company in proteins in space. Now scientists are itching (see ‘Miniature explorers’). Their diminutive Rome called IMT is looking at ways to power to send them farther afield, and more than a size cannot accommodate standard propulsion such engines with deployable solar panels that dozen deep-space CubeSats are in the pipeline. and long-range communications equipment, let can turn to constantly face the Sun. Together, all The cost — typically no more than alone complex scientific instruments. these technologies make solo CubeSats missions US$10 million for an interplanetary mission — Engineers are starting to overcome these feasible, says Walker. means that the mini-craft can take risks that a problems, says Roger Walker, who oversees Freeman predicts that more than a hundred more costly venture could not. They can also CubeSat development at the European Space CubeSats could be dispatched throughout work in swarms, which allows new kinds of Agency (ESA). To solve the communications the Solar System by the end of the next dec- experiments. CubeSats generally piggyback on problem, ESA’s first interplanetary CubeSats will ade — but only if they can get into space. He is the launch of other missions, and whereas trips talk to Earth through a mothership. CubeSats calling on all space agencies to agree to carry to low-Earth orbit, such as the cargo ships that will take part in the joint ESA–NASA Asteroid at least one CubeSat on each major planetary shuttle to the International Space Station, are Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission. Walker agrees: “It would really stimu- relatively common, missions to other parts of mission, planned for 2020, where they will take late the area. Ultimately, that’s the main prob- the Solar System are much rarer. on risky jobs such as up-close data collection as lem to overcome for interplanetary CubeSats, Lifts are so hard to come by that the first a larger probe plunges into an asteroid. alongside communications.” This would mean interplanetary CubeSat — NASA’s twin NASA’s planned mission to Europa, currently forging plans for a CubeSat tag-along early in INSPIRE mini-spacecraft, intended to test key under development, would also use the the mission’s design phase. technology for future missions — has been mother–daughter model, deploying a fleet of To cope with the large number of CubeSat waiting for almost two years. “We still have to CubeSats to make close fly-bys of the Jovian proposals, NASA also wants to see more

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Earth Station in Helston, UK, it is developing MINIATURE EXPLORERS a system that could solve two problems: a com- Previously limited to Earth orbit by their diminutive size, shoe-box-sized CubeSat spacecraft are now poised mercial mothership that would provide trans- to invade the rest of the Solar System, with missions planned to carry these craft as far as Jupiter. port to the Moon and a data relay for dozens of CubeSats, for a fee of around £5 million (US$6.6 INSPIRE Lunar mllion) per craft. Eventually, such a model could Flashlight expand, says the SSTL’s Christopher Saunders. MarCO “Essentially, we want to build a Solar-System Venus mission MOON internet,” he told the Interplanetary CubeSat workshop in Oxford in late May. SUN MERCURY VENUS EARTH MARS According to Freeman, CubeSats will soon be able to carry instruments that would have seemed off-limits only a few years ago, such as AIDA JUPITER high-resolution imagers and radar altimeters. And a recent investigation by the US National NEA Scout DIDYMOS Europa Multiple- Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medi- Flyby Mission cine of CubeSats’ potential concluded that the Size and distance not to scale EUROPA probes are capable of doing “fantastic science”, Thomas Zurbuchen, a space scientist at the Uni- low-cost commercial launchers developed, to an easier ride. NASA’s Space Launch System, versity of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said at the carry tens to hundreds of kilograms of payload, a heavy-lift rocket designed to send people meeting. “Much of it has yet to be imagined.” ■ in contrast to the 5 tonnes typical of launchers beyond Earth’s orbit, will carry 13 CubeSats designed for communications satellites. Free- and an uncrewed Orion capsule on its maiden man says that such smaller rockets could carry launch in 2018. The cargo will include Lunar CLARIFICATION perhaps a few dozen 5-kg CubeSats to low- Flashlight, which will use a reflected beam of In the News Feature ‘Mystery in the heavens’ Earth orbit, or be adapted to include an upper light to look for icy deposits in the Moon’s dark (Nature 534, 610–612; 2016), the discussion stage that could take a single CubeSat to deep craters, and Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout, of the initial radio burst meant to say that space. He hopes to use a similar method to send designed to explore a nearby asteroid. over the course of just a few milliseconds, the a free-flying probe to Venus, where it would ESA is developing a separate lunar approach. source’s output matched that of 500 million skim through the planet’s acidic atmosphere. Together with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd Suns in the same time period. CubeSats aimed for the Moon might get (SSTL) in Guildford, UK, and the Goonhilly