Abstract

For the past 50 years, the morphology for satellites has remained fundamentally unchanged despite evolutions in manufacturing, communications, and software occurring in other industries. Primary spacecraft support systems—power, attitude control, and others—are designed in the same way, whether in space telescopes, large communications satellites, interplanetary spacecraft, or Cubesats. This paradigm has been the status quo in spacecraft design and construction and has precluded any industry-wide, large-scale cost savings. While decreasing the size of satellites is one means of driving lower-cost solutions, the reliability, resolution, data rate and other performance measures of these small satellites are often vastly reduced.
To change this trend and ensure performance and utility at low cost, the fundamental architecture of satellites must change. To that end, DARPA proposes a cellularized satellite, or …

Date

2013

Authors

Lisa Hill, David Barnhart, Erin Fowler, Roger Hunter, Lucille M Hoag, Brook Sullivan, Peter Will

Book

AIAA Space 2013 Conference and Exposition

Pages

5486