Microsatellite and Formation Flying Technologies on University Nanosatellites
نویسندگان
چکیده
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA, and industry are jointly sponsoring the development and launch of 12 university nanosatellites. Through this project, the 10 selected universities will conduct innovative, low-cost experiments to explore the military usefulness of distributed satellite systems and micro and nanotechnologies in support of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s TechSat 21 distributed radar aperture collaborative microsatellite constellation. Among the technologies to be explored are formation flying, enhanced communications, miniaturized sensors and bus technologies, attitude control, and distributed satellite capabilities. Launch is planned for late 2001. This paper provides some detailed information on the technologies and science objectives of each of the nanosatellites.
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