Spacecraft

About CubeSats

SPRITE spacecraft deployed configuration (Top: Front View. Bottom: Back View) The telescope will be looking out the front, while the deployed solar arrays collect light.

CubeSats are small satellites that are usually designed to perform scientific measurements and observations in space. The original specifications for CubeSats were released in 1999 by Cal Poly and Stanford University in an effort to standardize design to allow for reduced cost and increased accessibility to space. They come in multiples of a standard cube size of 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm, called units (U). They are launched as a “guest” on a host rocket carrying much larger spacecraft.

About SPRITE’s Spacecraft

SPRITE will be the first NASA Astrophysics CubeSat to use a custom spacecraft BUS, leveraging BUS development work done by other University of Colorado (CU) Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) heliophysics CubeSats CTIM and MinXSS. The SPRITE team is working with other LASP teams to refine the CTIM BUS to be compatible with a broad “generic” CubeSat from any science discipline. This will save costs while enabling greater flexibility for both SPRITE and future LASP CubeSats. The attitude control system will be provided by Blue Canyon Technologies, a Boulder, Colorado-based company specializing in compact products for SmallSats and CubeSats.

Bus

The SPRITE spacecraft will be custom-built based on other LASP CubeSats and the Blue Canyon Technologies XACT attitude control system. LASP will custom build the solar panels and power control modules, Command and Data Handling (C&DH) system, and the instrument interfaces, as well as the mechanical structure. CU-LASPs extensive experience with CubeSats enables us to produce a low-cost custom spacecraft bus that could be tweaked for use on multiple missions, saving money and enabling a customizable layout that enhances the volume available to the science instrument. More details on the SPRITE spacecraft will come as the design matures. We are currently expecting our first test boards for the C&DH in mid-2020.