CubeSats In Search of Hotspots for Life Pete Klupar Breakthrough Prize Foundation [email protected] Fermi: “Where is everyone?” Within a few thousand light years there are 10’s of millions of stars In cosmic terms, the Sun is neither particularly old, nor young…. So, If civilization, once it formed survived in the MW, why isn’t there evidence of it? It’s a timescale problem, 13Gyr vs. 100,000 yrs [email protected] 3 2018 Breakthrough Prize Winners 2018 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences Awarded: Joanne Chory, Don W. Cleveland, Kazutoshi Mori, Kim Nasmyth, and Peter Walter. New Horizons in Physics Prizes Awarded; 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Physics Awarded; Christopher Hirata, Douglas Stanford, and Charles L. Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Andrea Young. ($100,000) each Lyman Page Jr., David N. Spergel, and the WMAP Science Team New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes Awarded; Aaron Naber, Maryna Viazovska, Zhiwei Yun, and 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics Awarded; Wei Zhang. (7) ($300,000) each Christopher Hacon and James McKernan. (13) 5/28/2019 4 Breakthrough Junior Challenge 2016 2016 2017 Hillary Diane Andales. Submit application and video no later than July 1, 2018 at 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time Ages 13 to 18 $250K Scholarship $100K Lab $50K Teacher 2015 Ryan Chester Ohio 5/28/2019 5 5/28/2019 6 BREAKTHROUGH WATCH Star, masked by coronagraph •Thermal imaging: Existing 10-m class Earth-like planet telescope have the sensitivity to catch thermal emission from an Earth-like planet orbiting Alpha Cen A or B. Very Large Telescope (Credit: ESO) •Astrometry: A habitable planet in orbit around Alpha Cen A or B would pull its host star by about 1 micro-arcsecond. Simulated 100h exposure This tiny periodic motion could be with 8-m telescope (Credit: Christian Marois) detected with a small space telescope measuring accurately the angular separation between binary systems. •Reflected light imaging: A small space telescopes equipped with a high- performance coronagraph masking starlight, can catch the visible starlight reflected by a habitable planet in orbit around nearby stars. Baycenter Together, thermal imaging, and astrometry could Astrometry Stars orbits around system measure the planet mass, orbit, radius, and center of mass (Barycenter) 5/28/2019 temperature 7 BREAKTHROUGH STARSHOT • Near Term Goals 2019 to 2023 • Series of demonstrations reduce risk and demonstration • Develop systems models to predict systems performance • Concentrate on LASER (~55%), Sail(~30%), Comms (10%) and Systems (5%) • Long Term 2023 to 2030 • Design and Demonstrate end to end system • Far Term Goals 2040 to 2060 • Send a probe to a nearby (< 5pc) earth like planet in the habitable zone • Probe to achieve 20% light speed • Return meaningful scientific data to earth within 5 years of encounter 5/28/2019 8 Breakthrough Starshot Starshot CENTAURI SYSTEM MISSION POINT DESIGN $8.4B CAPEX comprised of: $2.0B lasers (200 GW transmitted power) $3.0B optics (2.8 km array effective diameter) $3.4B energy storage (68 GWh stored pulse energy) $7M energy cost per Starshot (68 GWh @$0.1/kWh) 4.2 m sail diameter 3.8 g sail mass 9 min (521 s) beam duration 10 min (594 s) sail acceleration time 40 Pa temperature-limited photon pressure 562 N temperature-limited force 15,000 g’s temperature-limited acceleration 2,300 g’s final acceleration (at 0.15 au, 73 ls from source) 34 kW/m2 beamer maximum radiant exitance 14.4 GW/m2 sailcraft theoretical maximum irradiance 5/28/2019 8.5 GW/m2 sailcraft temperature-limited irradiance 9 Photon Engine Challenges • Atmospherics • Atmospheric compensation of >1km apertures • Generating/maintaining the irradiance profile on the sail • Phasing • Phasing up to 50 M devices • Pointing the beamer array and stabilizing the beam • High fill factor array • Production • Manufacturing the beamers • Cost predictability and control • Producing the power and storing the energy 5/28/2019 10 Sail Challenges Material properties, which influence the choice of materials and how the sail with the sail is to be made, are its reflectivity, absorptivity and transmissivity, tensile strength in its areal density. Sail thickness: 50 nm, Sail Density: 0.7 g/cm3 , Sail reflectivity: 0.99995, Sail Absorptance : 0.00001, Sail emissivity: 0.5, Acceleration withstand 60,000 gs Total optical power: 50 GW Stability, is influenced by sail shape, beam shape and the distribution of mass, such as payload, on the sail. Laser system interactions, with the sail through its power density distribution on the sail, causing acceleration, the duration of the beam, the width of the beam, the pointing error of the beam as well as its pointing jitter. 5/28/2019 11 Communication Starshot • Return 100 images from ~4 Light Years • 4 mega pixel images, 16 bit per image, 64 Mbits per image • RTG - ~ 0.3g Pu-238 400 mWthermal /g *.3 g* 7% conversion eff ~ 10 mW • Pointing Attitude Determination and Control Finding Earth • Error correction X band 8.4 GHz, 3.6 cm 780 nm, 0.78 μm Ka band 32 GHz, ~1 cm 1550 nm, 1.5 μm lunar-laser-communication-1.PNG 12 5/28/2019 13 Selected Moons in Solar Systems With Earth, Mars and Venus for Scale Enceladus All bodies to scale 1 pixel =25 km Earth Mars 14 Venus Cost Drivers Atlas V Solar $110 M Falcon Heavy • Leaving Earth is Hard Falcon 9 $90M $62M SLS • Payload Development/ Science Team $800M • Spacecraft Development Astra $1M Electron $6M Relativity Space $5M 17 M tall Your Name Here 70 M tall 70 M tall 53 M tall 111 M tall 15 Launch Vehicle Performance C3 = 85 = Mercury Orbit C3=100 = Jupiter Exotic Approaches • Ion Propulsion • Used on several ESA and NASA missions. • Accelerate Xenon ions to 40 km/sec • Requires many 10’s KW of power, very large solar arrays to perform breaking burn at Saturn • E-wire Propulsion • Electric solar wind sail, invented in 2006 by Pekka Janhunen in Finland • Uses the solar wind momentum for producing thrust • Bench unit built, No on orbit demonstrations, power consumption high • Position Propulsion • Basic research on going, no bench top demonstrations • Astra/Rocket Lab (small rockets) • Rocket Lab has demonstrated lift • Would require extended flight times to targets 17 SUN DIVER CONCEPT ❶ ❶ launch, deploy ❷ deceleration (90 days) ❸ closest approach to Sun Earth ❹ acceleration (1 day) ❷ ❺ cruise ❻ take/relay data Acceleration ❸ Solar flux ❻ ❺ ❹ Circular membrane sail Sun with integrated payload 8/17/2017 Breakthrough Starshot Proprietary 5 Travel times are shown in green below. 261 days 152 days 176 days 11 days 8/17/2017 Breakthrough Starshot Proprietary 1 9 Venus Why Venus • Cheaper place to make mistakes than Jupiter, the Lonely Ugly Step Sister of Earth • Venus was a temperate world long ago, with seas that persisted for eons — perhaps 2 billion years or more, according to recent modeling research. • Temperatures and pressures at 50 Km are close to those of Earth's surface, so it's possible that Venusian life — if it ever existed — didn't die out • Mostly sulfuric acid clouds, biologists have found all manner of hardy microbes here on Earth capable of tolerating similarly extreme conditions. And these same acidic Venus clouds could potentially provide chemical energy to any microbes that may be floating around up there, researchers have said. • Intriguingly, Venus' upper atmosphere also abounds with a mysterious compound that absorbs ultraviolet (UV) radiation • The planet has gobbled up many tons of Earth rocks that were blasted into space by violent impacts over the past 4.5 billion years, some of which may have sheltered unwittingly voyaging microbes. (Venus material has also made its way to Earth, so it's also possible that our planet was colonized long ago by native Venusians.) Venus Investigation David Grinspoon, Mason Peck and Sanjay Limaye; Planetary Science Institute 22 Properties of Venus Clouds Hospitable to Life • Global clouds are much larger, more continuous, and stable than clouds on Earth. Particle lifetimes of months (Grinspoon et al, 1993). “Particles do not fall” (Imamura, 2006) • Large “mode 3” particles at lower cloud level (~ 50 km altitude) -- 1 bar atm pressure -- ~350 K -- make up most of the mass of the cloud deck -- may contain an unknown, non-absorbing core material which comprises up to 50% by volume of the particles (Cimino, 1982; Grinspoon et al. 1993). • Superrotation of atmosphere shortens duration of the night • Chemical disequilibrium => coexistence of H2 and O2 H2S and SO2 LEO, Venus or Enceladus Missions • LEO: • Chipsats with chirality sensors; Chipsats 2.0 in the ignorosphere • Sprite deployment from high- “Microfluidic chips for chirality exploration” Stefan Nagl, Philipp Schulze, et al altitude balloons as precursor to Anal. Chem., 2011, 83 (9), pp 3232–3238 DOI: 10.1021/ac200150w Venus science March 28, 2011 • Venus: • Chipsats ballutes deployed outside or inside atmosphere • Enceladus: • Plume detection 25 55 SPQR (SMALL PAYLOAD QUICK RETURN) 26 Venus Clouds ► Target area: Clouds between 30km to 70km ► Chemistry: Life chemical readily available including Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Hydrogen, in usable forms ► Physics: physical conditions similar to standard conditions on earth, 20C and 100K Pa at 50 km, No radiation belts, will be exposed Cosmic Rays induced magnetic field provides protection from Solar Wind. ► Energy: Significant chemical and solar energy available ► Accessibility: Difficult to get to 50km dense atmosphere, multiple flybys ► Possible detection sensors: UV Spectrometers and Organic Analyzer ► Cruise Duration: 5 to 12 month cruise from earth ► Mission description: Mothership Ride Share to GTO Holman Xfer to Venus SOI, enter Elliptical orbit drop 10 small reentry vehicle with payloads, $18,000K 27 Icy Satellites…not “ocean worlds”, but planet-sized aqueous caves! Europa Enceladus Mothership Daughters and Granddaughters Enceladus • Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn.