5 Feb 2021

NASA's TechEdSat series of technology demonstrations aims to bring small payloads back to Earth or to the surface of Mars – while pushing the state of the art in a variety of CubeSat technologies and experiments.

TechEdSat is a series of collaborative projects and missions that pairs college and university students with NASA researchers to evaluate new technologies for use in small satellites, or CubeSats. Students do the hands-on work – designing, building, and testing CubeSat spacecraft systems and analyzing the results – for each flight mission, under mentorship of engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

CubeSat technologies enable the efficient use of small satellites for a variety of research and technological purposes, and the mission focus of the TechEdSat series is bringing small payloads from orbit back to Earth. Advancing the entry, descent, and landing, or EDL, systems for CubeSats – and sharing new technology with the spaceflight community – will allow more researchers access to cost-effective flight opportunities, leading to more technology testing and science in space.

For example, being able to send CubeSats from orbit to Earth could provide on-demand delivery of samples or hardware from the International Space Station or future space platforms. This technology could also allow future small spacecraft missions to reach the surface of Mars or other worlds in our solar system.

Some of the systems used to control the EDL of a spacecraft are somewhat like driving a car: they use braking, steering, and navigation systems to reach home. Unique to spaceflight is the need to mitigate the intense heating that comes from speeding though the atmosphere.

So far, all of the TechEdSat spacecraft have been intentionally burned up in Earth's atmosphere at the end of their missions. These initial missions run tests at altitudes up to over 250 miles above Earth, working out the kinks of the first phases of EDL systems to make sure that the systems work and are safe. The ultimate goal is to develop a complete EDL system and eventually to land a CubeSat at a defined location on Earth.

A variety of technologies are developed through TechEdSat missions, including the exo-brake. This new technology is a "wing" that can slow a spacecraft down and eventually allow it to return to the Earth, or potentially other worlds like Mars, in a controlled way. Foil constructions, using plastic and metal materials, origami-folded into designs that can expand, reshape, and be controlled by commands sent via space-to-space communication links. To facilitate this, the TechEdSat series is also advancing innovative solutions for communications in low-Earth orbit. 

Current communications methods are expensive and too bulky for CubeSats, and the new technologies could allow researchers to extend these concepts to lunar and planetary missions, extending the capabilities of small satellites past low-Earth orbit. Also, recent innovations have allowed for much larger onboard processing power. Using graphic processor units that use electric analog circuits to mimic the human nervous system, known as or neuromorphic processors, adds much more "thinking" capability in these small boxes.

The next evolution of the TechEdSat project is the Nano-Orbital Workshop platform, or NOW, which includes collaboration from industry and other government organizations  all working together at a rapid pace with the ability to have a high cadence of flight missions.

The ability to test these new technologies in space at such a low cost is made possible by the standardized systems inherent to the CubeSat concept, including the system that ejects them into space from larger spacecraft. The CubeSat platform has standard sizes for both satellites and their interfaces with deployment mechanisms, like a household plug and socket. Special dispensers help the CubeSats fit with the deployer on the space station and other vehicles. CubeSats come in various sizes, with the basic unit coming in a cube, roughly the size of a square tissue box and able to fit in your hand. CubeSats use a standard sizing scheme, where each 10-centimeter cube is considered one unit, or U. TechEdSat's first mission was 1U in size, with recent missions expanding up to 6U.

Ames' Role

NASA's Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley is home to the TechEdSat team, chartered to prototype novel solutions to technical spaceflight challenges by providing access to space. Student interns, young professionals, and volunteers supply labor and ingenuity and receive invaluable hands-on experience with real spaceflight hardware. By taking advantage of low-cost flights on balloons, sounding rockets, and orbital opportunities for small satellites, the TechEdSat series makes testing innovative technology in space more accessible. Satellites from the series have been launched directly from rockets, or with a stopover on the International Space Station.

[Image]

(A) NASA's Technology Educational Satellite 8, or TechEdSat-8, deploying from the International Space Station Jan. 31, 2019.

(B) An illustration of NASA's exo-brake connected to a CubeSat with the International Space Station in the background. The exo-brake is a tension-based, flexible braking device resembling a cross-parachute that deploys from the rear of a satellite to increase the drag. It's used as a de-orbit device that replaces more complicated systems.