MISSE-15 is an external craft within the MISSE series aimed at testing various materials in the harsh environment of space. The crafts include ram, wake, zenith, and nadir exposures. (These are coordinate axes in the spacecraft-centered coordinate system.)
Craft Overview:
MISSE-15 was sent to the International Space Station (ISS) carrying MISSE sample carriers (MSC’s). These are what house the different material samples which are to be tested in the vacuum of space.
GT-1 is the first of four in a series of 1U CubeSats to be developed by Georgia Tech annually. GT-1 contains experimental deployable solar panels and a deployable UHF radio antenna. This mission demonstrates a rapid lifecycle of a university level CubeSat.
The goal of the GT-1 Mission is to produce a working satellite bus as a foundation for experimental technologies that will fly on missions GT-2 through 4.
Craft Overview:
GT-1 is a 1.14 kg 1U CubeSat with experimental deployable solar panels and a deployable UHF radio antenna.
Deployment:
GT-1 will be launching to the ISS on a CRS supply mission in Q3 2021. From there it will be loaded into a CubeSat orbital deployer and inserted into Low Earth Orbit.
The Lunar Flashlight mission consists of a solar-powered 6U CubeSat whose objective is to search the lunar poles of the moon for water ice and other volatiles. Georgia Tech’s Space Systems Design Laboratory (SSDL) is designing and building a new green propellant propulsion system that will perform orbit insertion for NASA’s Lunar Flashlight. This custom propulsion system will deliver over 3000 N-s of total impulse for the orbit insertion and other maneuvers. Additionally, this system fits within a 2.5U volume and has a total wet mass under 6 kilograms.
Lunar Flashlight aims to demonstrate and utilize CubeSat abilities to conduct space science missions at a much lower cost and complexity than larger missions. Upon mission completion, Lunar Flashlight may become the first CubeSat to achieve orbit around a planetary orbit that is not earth.
Craft Overview:
For the LFL Cubesat, the compact form factor of the 6U CubeSat canisterized dispenser standard with slight modifications will be used. Any modifications done are to accommodate the mass of 14 kilograms for a form factor of 116.2 x 239.4 x 366 mm. LFL will use commercial off the shelf components that have been screen for use in space applications and will limit fault redundancy. The LFL propulsion system is a new green propellant technology being designed and built by Georgia Tech.
Transfer of raw data and remote control of the spacecraft will be done using a miniaturized radio called “Iris”. After the ejection of the spacecraft from the dispenser, four solar panels will be deployed to provide power to the spacecraft.
The LFL instrument will occupy 2U of the 6U spacecraft. Four high-power diode lasers, each emitting a different wavelength, will be aligned with a multi-band reflectometer based on an optical receiver. The wavelengths of the instrument each correspond to peak absorption for water ice.
Lunar Flashlight CubeSat. (a) CubeSat with deployed solar panels. (b) LF CubeSat stowed. (c) LFL Instrument
Deployment:
NASA’s Lunar Flashlight will be deployed on the Artemis-1 mission in 2021.
