Making the Case for Nanosatellites

Space Exploration

An investment in space exploration provides a multitude of benefits. The chief advantage of it is that it enhances the technological capabilities that results in a positive payoff for decades to come, that aids in assuring human quality of life. The early satellite launches provided us with the ability to study various fields, such as telecommunications, meteorology, and cartography (global positioning systems). As the years go by, the exploration of space delivers high returns for invested funds in space.

Further benefits include innovations that touch the daily life of the common man; like medication management in patients’ homes, viewing changes in forestation, and more affordable MRI scans.

It also provides the most human endeavor one can ever undergo; to figure out humanity’s place in the universe.

Currently, the state of space exploration is very expensive. The blame rests on big governmental space agencies. They build rockets with traditional accounting measures, and with traditional contractors, as said by Lori Garver, a former NASA official in an article you can read about here. These agencies are building rockets powered by 1970s era engines, and are so costly that they can only send them to space about once a year. This poses a lot of barriers to further developments in space technology as these companies become more and more averse to risk due to the high cost.

The cost of sending something to is astounding. For example, take an asteroid rendezvous mission of a payload of 500 kg, powered by chemical thrusters. To get to Lower Earth Orbit, a typical SpaceX-built Falcon rocket with Merlin engines burn through 2044 litres of fuel every second, for 180 seconds. Once the second stage has detached, the payload satellite would need 2147 kg of propellant to accomplish the mission. It translates to a large cost just to move from point A to B. In addition to the fuel, operating costs of launches are also momentous.

Waitbutwhy has an amazing series of articles that further discuss why aerospace companies are so allergic to risk and unwilling to try new technologies as they are today. There’s is a huge bias against taking risks because everyone wants to optimize damages. Such companies are almost always government-funded and therefore depend on their national budgets.

Why Nanosatellites Can Solve This Issue

So we’ve established the fact that space launches are expensive. They will continue to be expensive (unless some breakthrough happens by Musk’s or Bezos’ companies). Because they are expensive, they can only launch a few times per year. Therefore, no new technologies can be tested because the aerospace companies want things that just work.

The majority of payloads of rockets into space are satellites. Most satellites are to support industries here down on earth, like communications. The costs of sending a satellite into space has to be addressed right now, as the next billion people from developing countries are striving to get onto the internet. In the African continent, people are forgoing the traditional landline for internet due to difficulty in laying the infrastructure, and thus their primary form of internet access are from mobile data.

Moreover, these countries (and many others) are highly dependent on agricultural produce, and climate change is more efficiently monitored with the use of meteorological satellites. As natural disasters become more violent as a result of global warming, the need for more countries to play their part in environmental research grows ever greater.

If the costs of satellite launches goes down tremendously, even developing countries can launch their own to bolster their economies and infrastructure.

According to a survey done by the Tauri Group, 75% of satellite launches are conducted by the USA; cheap satellites level the playing field between countries of lower GDP. Moreover, space companies will be less risk-averse to trying out new technologies on satellites as it costs less, so they can launch a whole lot more.

Seeing the trend that satellites launches will increase in the years to come, nanosatellites have been increasingly popular. They are light, therefore do not require as much fuel to launch into space. Many can be even launched in one go.

Nanosatellites (or microsatellites, in some literature) can be described as satellites with a mass ranging from 1 kg to 10 kg.

These do much to keep launch costs down because nanosatellites have a low development cost and shorter project schedules. It all adds up to significant reductions in price. They also increase mission reliability by redundancy of spacecraft. As a result you can send more of them into space, and be more creative to attempt different designs because there is a larger margin of error.

What’s Next for Nanosats?

You might be thinking to yourself right now: “If nanosats are so good, why aren’t they the default configuration for satellites right now?”

Well, the thing is, it’s still a work in progress. Just like a lot of other technology that promises to give a breakthrough in how we live (think nuclear fusion), nanosats are still being researched thoroughly.

The miniaturization of electronics has happened rapidly in the past decade. A nanosat has even been launched just controlled by the circuitry of a Nexus One phone. But other components are still incapable of replacing the functionality of the larger satellites.

One such component are the propulsion systems. They are needed to maintain geosynchronous orbit. They too need effective miniaturization; and many different methods have been researched. Vaporizing Liquid Microthrusters (VLM), solid propellants, cold gas propellants, bi-propellant systems, and ion propulsion have been looked into to give the best “bang for the buck.”

It is important to note that due to their small size, the solar panels that the nanosats bring with them are also small, hence the need for more efficient, power-saving electromechanical systems development in such craft.