Nanosatellites

12 I-3aScientific Payloads

Anna Gregorio

Department of Physics, University of Trieste, Italy

PICOSATS SRL, Trieste, Italy

INFN – Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Trieste, Italy

INAF – Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Trieste, Italy

12.1 Introduction

One major question for many nanosatellite developers is to choose right kind of payloads to be accommodated on board those very small satellites. This question does not simply relate to the feasibility of the measurement, but rather its quality, intended as the performance of the scientific results small satellites can produce. Some solutions are inhibited by strict technical limitations that will be hardly overcome in the coming future, for example, power and thermal control, and lidars, or sophisticated instruments for astrophysics measurements.

If one does not consider the payloads excluded by these hard, technical limitations, the main point of nanosatellite is the size, as payload performance often depends on its dimension especially in case of scientific payloads. Here, a very small satellite as the CubeSat is taken as a reference—a 3U CubeSat with a box of 10 cm³ base and 30 cm length. Although many of the instruments that will be described later better fit within a 6U CubeSat, the general discussion does not change.

To start with, the performance of optical imaging systems for Earth observations (nadir pointing) is linked to the physical limitations on the size of aperture area. ...