Nanospacecraft fleet for multi-asteroid touring with electric solar wind sails

Slavinskis, Andris; Janhunen, P.; Toivanen, Petri; Muinonen, K.; Penttilä, Antti; Granvik, Mikael; Kohout, T.; Gritsevich, Maria; Pajusalu, Mihkel; Sünter, Indrek; Ehrpais, Hendrik; Dalbins, Janis; Iakubivskyi, Iaroslav; Eenmäe, T.; Ilbis, Erik; Mauro, D.; Stupl, Jan; Rivkin, Andrew S.; Bottke, W. F.

doi:10.1109/aero.2018.8396670

Cited by 12 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The initial SISPO package was developed to assist in the Multi-Asteroid Touring (MAT) mission, where a fleet of nanospacecraft, propelled by electric sails, flys by a large number of main-belt asteroids [25,26]. The MAT concept cannot rely on typical deep-space-networkbased solutions to operate and navigate the fleet; it requires most of the operations to be performed autonomously.…”

Section: Application To Space Mission Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

SISPO: Space Imaging Simulator for Proximity Operations

et al. 2022

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This paper describes the architecture and demonstrates the capabilities of a newly developed, physically-based imaging simulator environment called SISPO, developed for small solar system body fly-by and terrestrial planet surface mission simulations. The image simulator utilises the open-source 3-D visualisation system Blender and its Cycles rendering engine, which supports physically based rendering capabilities and procedural micropolygon displacement texture generation. The simulator concentrates on realistic surface rendering and has supplementary models to produce realistic dust- and gas-environment optical models for comets and active asteroids. The framework also includes tools to simulate the most common image aberrations, such as tangential and sagittal astigmatism, internal and external comatic aberration, and simple geometric distortions. The model framework’s primary objective is to support small-body space mission design by allowing better simulations for characterisation of imaging instrument performance, assisting mission planning, and developing computer-vision algorithms. SISPO allows the simulation of trajectories, light parameters and camera’s intrinsic parameters.

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Section: Application To Space Mission Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

SISPO: Space Imaging Simulator for Proximity Operations

et al. 2022

Self Cite

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show abstract

“…The initial SISPO package was developed to assist in the Multi-Asteroid Touring (MAT) mission, where a fleet of nanospacecraft, propelled by electric sails, flys by a large number of main-belt asteroids [25,26]. The MAT concept cannot rely on typical deep-space-network-based solutions to operate and navigate the fleet; it requires most of the operations to be performed autonomously.…”

Section: Application To Space Mission Designsmentioning

confidence: 99%

SISPO: Space Imaging Simulator for Proximity Operations

Pajusalu,

Iakubivskyi,

Schwarzkopf

et al. 2021

Preprint

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This paper describes the architecture and demonstrates the capabilities of a newly developed, physically-based imaging simulator environment called SISPO, developed for small solar system body fly-by and terrestrial planet surface mission simulations. The image simulator utilises the open-source 3-D visualisation system Blender and its Cycles rendering engine, which supports physically based rendering capabilities and procedural micropolygon displacement texture generation. The simulator concentrates on realistic surface rendering and has supplementary models to produce realistic dust-and gas-environment optical models for comets and active asteroids. The framework also includes tools to simulate the most common image aberrations, such as tangential and sagittal astigmatism, internal and external comatic aberration, and simple geometric distortions. The model framework's primary objective is to support small-body space mission design by allowing better simulations for characterisation of imaging instrument performance, assisting mission planning, and developing computer-vision algorithms. SISPO allows the simulation of trajectories, light parameters and camera's intrinsic parameters.

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“…The electric sail is well-suited to enable a mission with fleets of nanospacecraft, such as the Multi-Asteroid Touring concept [41]. However, several other technologies must be developed and demonstrated to enable such a radical change in interplanetary exploration: miniature RWs and CGP for attitude and spin control; miniature ST; optical navigation near a target and in deep space; communication solutions that would not rely solely on deep-space networks.…”

Section: Deep-space-technology Demonstrationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While complex multi-tethered concepts have been discussed in the past [60,61,62], covering missions to non-Keplerian orbits as well as inner-and outer-Solarsystem rendezvous and flybys, the latest study shows the feasibility of a fleet of autonomous nanospacecraft to reach the main asteroid belt and return to Earth's vicinity with a single 20-km tether in 3.2 years [41]. Analyses show that cubesat-esque nanospacecraft could indeed perform surface and trajectory reconstructions as well as provide spectral information on asteroids with shape reconstruction possible during a 300-km flyby [42].…”

Section: Coulomb Drag Propulsion For Interplanetary Voyagementioning

confidence: 99%