Tiny Chipsats, Big Success: Probes the size of a crack

A fleet of tiny satellites flashed a big potential in Earth orbit.

Mission team members announced yesterday (June 3) that the 105 mini-probes the size of a cracker had phoned home in March, one day after the deployment of their KickSat-2 carrier spacecraft.

"This successful demonstration confirms that incredibly tiny and inexpensive spacecraft are more than simply possible – they are real," Mason Peck, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell and director of Space Systems Design Studio's 39; university said in a statement.

"KickSat has launched the era of democratic space," added Peck, who held the position of chief technologist at NASA from November 2011 to January 2014.

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The KickSat project started in Cornell in 2011 and members of the team, led by Zac Manchester, now an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, have point this little device with the help of a crowdfunding campaign.

The chips, known as Sprites, weigh 0.14 ounces (4 grams) and cost less than $ 100 each, the team members said. Their bodies are square printed circuits measuring only 3.6 inches apart. Despite this Bantam framework, each Sprite has an integrated power and communication system, as well as multiple sensors.

The original KickSat carrying Sprites was launched in April 2014, with a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule for the International Space Station (ISS). The cubesat deployed successfully into orbit, but the the team was unable to fly the sprites freely before KickSat returns to Earth.

But Manchester and his colleagues continued to work. They built and loaded KickSat-2, which was launched last November aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship heading for the ISS. The freighter dropped KickSat-2 in Earth orbit in February, after leaving the laboratory in orbit.

The team members spent the following weeks analyzing the mission data. They have now determined that the chipsets were able to transmit radio transmissions in a range of 400 megahertz a day later, using only a few milliwatts of solar power.

On March 21st, the sprites returned to Earth as planned, burning in the atmosphere of our planet.

The incursion was a great success for small probes, said Peck.

"The goal of Sprites on KickSat-2 is to demonstrate basic capabilities, including communications that do not interfere with other satellites," he said. "In a few years, we expect groundbreaking scientific and commercial applications.The next generation has a GPS navigation capability and can measure atmospheric behavior, magnetic fields and more."

For example, added Peck, the team is developing a Sprite mission that could fly with CAESAR, a mission proposed by NASA that would aim to recover samples from a comet and send them back on earth. (CAESAR is one of the two finalists for a mid-2020 launch slot NASA's New Frontiers program with mid-priced missions. The other finalist is Dragonfly, who will explore Titan, the huge moon of Saturn.)

And Sprite technology, or its derivatives, could possibly venture much further. After all, Manchester is a member of the advisory committee for Starshot, which is trying to develop tiny "Starchips" with laser sail that could explore the exoplanets up close.

Starshot breakthrough assesses if his approach is achievable. If all goes well, the project could launch its first interstellar mission in about 30 years.

Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life, "Over there"(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.