Ravi Teja Nallapu

A cubesat centrifuge for long duration milligravity research

We advocate a low-cost strategy for long-duration research into the ‘milligravity’ environment of asteroids, comets and small moons, where surface gravity is a vector field typically less than 1/1000 the gravity of Earth. Unlike the microgravity environment of space, there is a directionality that gives rise, over time, to strangely familiar geologic textures and landforms. In addition to advancing planetary science, and furthering technologies for hazardous asteroid mitigation and in situ resource utilization, simplified access to long-duration milligravity offers significant potential for advancing human spaceflight, biomedicine and manufacturing. We show that a commodity 3U (10 × 10 × 34 cm3) cubesat containing a laboratory of loose materials can be spun to 1 r.p.m. = 2π/60 s−1 on its long axis, creating a centrifugal force equivalent to the surface gravity of a kilometer-sized asteroid. We describe the first flight demonstration, where small meteorite fragments will pile up to create a patch of real regolith under realistic asteroid conditions, paving the way for subsequent missions where landing and mobility technology can be flight-proven in the operational environment, in low-Earth orbit. The 3U design can be adapted for use onboard the International Space Station to allow for variable gravity experiments under ambient temperature and pressure for a broader range of experiments.

Radiometric actuators for spacecraft attitude control

CubeSats and small satellites are emerging as low-cost tools to perform astronomy, exoplanet searches and earth observation. These satellites can be dedicated to pointing at targets for weeks or months at a time. This is typically not possible on larger missions where usage is shared. Current satellites use reaction wheels and where possible magneto-torquers to control attitude. However, these actuators can induce jitter due to various sources. In this work, we introduce a new class of actuators that exploit radiometric forces induced by gasses on surface with a thermal gradient. Our work shows that a CubeSat or small spacecraft mounted with radiometric actuators can achieve precise pointing of few arc-seconds or less and avoid the jitter problem. The actuator is entirely solid-state, containing no moving mechanical components. This ensures high-reliability and long-life in space. A preliminary design for these actuators is proposed, followed by feasibility analysis of the actuator performance.

Erratum: A cubesat centrifuge for long duration milligravity research

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML version of this article.

An experimental platform for multi-spacecraft phase-array communications

The emergence of small satellites and CubeSats for interplanetary exploration will mean hundreds if not thousands of spacecraft exploring every corner of the solar-system. Current methods for communication and tracking of deep space probes use ground based systems such as the Deep Space Network (DSN). However, the increased communication demand will require radically new methods to ease communication congestion. Networks of communication relay satellites located at strategic locations such as geostationary orbit and Lagrange points are potential solutions. Instead of one large communication relay satellite, we could have scores of small satellites that utilize phase arrays to effectively operate as one large satellite. Excess payload capacity on rockets can be used to warehouse more small satellites in the communication network. The advantage of this network is that even if one or a few of the satellites are damaged or destroyed, the network still operates but with degraded performance. The satellite network would operate in a distributed architecture and some satellites maybe dynamically repurposed to split and communicate with multiple targets at once. The potential for this alternate communication architecture is significant, but this requires development of satellite formation flying and networking technologies. Our research has found neural-network control approaches such as the Artificial Neural Tissue can be effectively used to control multirobot/multi-spacecraft systems and can produce human competitive controllers. We have been developing a laboratory experiment platform called Athena to develop critical spacecraft control algorithms and cognitive communication methods. We briefly report on the development of the platform and our plans to gain insight into communication phase arrays for space.