European Planetary Science Congress 2018
16–21 September 2018
TU Berlin | Berlin | Germany

MTI6

Deep-Space SmallSats mission concepts
Convener: Brook Lakew  | Co-conveners: Sabrina Feldman , Andris Slavinskis 
Oral programme
 / Thu, 20 Sep, 08:30–10:15  / Room Saturn
Poster programme
 / Attendance Wed, 19 Sep, 16:15–18:00  / Display Wed, 19 Sep, 08:00–20:00  / Poster area

Due to radical platform and instrument miniaturisation, and paradigm shift in satellite design, nanosatellites/CubeSats/SmallSats are already used for Earth observation. The paradigm shift brakes the vicious circle of satellites being expensive, hence failure of a satellite is not acceptable which in turn drives the cost even higher due to strict requirements, such as full redundancy of all systems. The next step is to use nanosatellites for interplanetary exploration which will open a new range of technological solutions – fleets and formations satellites, autonomous distributed systems, propellantless propulsion and mothership-daughtership configuration; improvements – science return from an order of magnitude larger subset of planetary bodies and a marginal affect to mission success by failure of some satellites; as well as challenges – instrument performance, fleet design, advanced on-board systems, novel attitude and orbit control, etc.
We invite to submit abstracts relevant to the topics described above.