Imagine you had a fleet of nano-satellites deployed around an asteroid, a comet or a moon.

WHAT WOULD YOU USE IT FOR?

Call for abstracts: “NANO-SATELLITES DEPLOYED FROM CARRIER SPACECRAFT – A PARADIGM SHIFT IN PLANETARY SCIENCES?”

Session PS1.3/GI2.13 at EGU 2015
Abstracts are due 07 January 2015

Across the planetary science community, there is an increasing interest in carrying secondary spacecraft on-board larger missions to planets, moons, asteroids and comets. This tendency is significantly inspired by the relative ease and sinking price of building nano-satellites. Both space agencies and companies have been proposing design concepts for such carriers. The idea of deploying a number of small spacecraft around a celestial body provides new and unseen scientific opportunities for advanced studies. Those may for instance take advantage of operating in an interconnected cloud or constellation. Individual inexpensive nano-satellites deployed from a carrier can also take greater exploration risks than would be possible for an expensive integrated spacecraft. This session invites contributions discussing the scientific potential of hosted nano-satellites, new instruments suited to the limited volume and power on nano-satellites, mission concepts and associated challenges as well as possible solutions.

Further information & abstract submission:  http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2015/session/18433

European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2015 Vienna, Austria
12-17 April 2015