Orion won’t have NASA’s new rocket all to itself. Sharing the ride with this new crew capsule will be 13 secondary payloads – the last three of which were just announced last week. These secondary payloads are small satellites known as CubeSats.
This is an especially exciting opportunity for CubeSats. Generally, CubeSats only have launch opportunities to travel into low-Earth orbit. On this first flight of NASA’s new rocket, Space Launch System (SLS), the CubeSats will travel into deep space.
The last three slots for CubeSats were reserved for international partners.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Tokyo will have two CubeSats on this mission. One, named EQUULEUS, will help us understand the radiation environment in the region around Earth. The other, OMOTENASHI, will explore the lunar surface as a demonstration of low-cost and small spacecraft technology.
Future low-cost missions to study the moon’s surface may come from OMOTENASHI.
The third international CubeSat slot will be filled by a spacecraft named ArgoMoon. It’s being built by an Italian company, Argotec, under the purview of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). This CubeSat will takes photographs of the Orion vehicle during Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) and evaluate the performance of the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) – the stage that will propel Orion into a lunar trajectory.
From these small satellites, we’ll learn more about the deep space environment and the moon. The possibilities for future missions may be created through the technologies they’ll demonstrate.
Where will the CubeSats be located in SLS? Inside the Orion Stage Adapter – take a look below:
Here’s what the Orion Stage Adapter looks like now:
What will the other 10 CubeSats do? The different spacecraft will help us learn about the lunar surface and resources, an asteroid, the effect of deep space radiation over long periods of time on living organisms, and will monitor space weather.
NASA’s Cube Quest Challenge will also have three satellites launched on this flight.
All this from just one flight of SLS.
Imagine what it’s future will hold.
The first flight of SLS, EM-1, will launch in 2018. Learn more about SLS at NASA.gov.