Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group has claimed a global first in successfully fitting a nanosatellite selfie stick that uses a liquid lens to take photos of both the satellite itself and the Earth.
In a significant breakthrough for measuring and harnessing how radio waves behave in the ionosphere (they can bounce around and reflect with little degradation), the Spacecraft Assembly, Integration, and Test team at Defence’s research and development lab and rapid prototyping shop says it’s now got its rather unique space-bound satellite self-portrait solution working nicely to keep its new ‘CubeSat’ pinging away.
The use and behaviour of radio waves in the ionosphere has long been a source of major fascination for radio and physics researchers due to its potential applications and the effects radiation can have on the Earth, such as solar flares disrupting normally predictable radio signals.
Defence said the low-earth-orbit main mission nanosat, known as ‘Buccaneer Main Mission’, was launched six months ago and has been behaving well so far.
Survival in space is always the main game, but “one of Buccaneer Main Mission’s secondary systems is the Manoeuvrable Antenna and Terrestrial Imaging System (MANTIS),” Defence said.
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“The unique sovereign system features a re-deployable scissor arm that holds a rotatable dual-surface mirror, with a convex side for self-imaging and a flat side for Earth-imaging”. To be specific: a selfie stick.
The MANTIS was deployed for the first time in August, “and using its liquid lens for adjustable focusing, the DSTG team captured multiple self-images of the satellite,” Defence said.
Does my antenna look big in this? Image captured by DSTG nanosatellite Buccaneer Main Mission, off the South Australian coastline and the Great Australian Bight.
“This marks the first known successful use of a liquid lens in space, and we could not be more excited with the results,” team leader Paul Alvino said, adding the Buccaneer Main Mission has been “kicking goals.”
“It’s demonstrated all of its primary experimental objectives, and is currently working through its secondary objectives,” Alvino said.
Buccaneer’s primary system is a 3.2m cross-shaped antenna system that Primary System leader Mark Jessop noted was more than 10 times the length of the nanosatellite itself and has undertaken “more than 60 data collections using Buccaneer’s digital high-frequency receiver.”
“Very recently, the primary system also performed an on-orbit firmware update, enabling us to perform additional experimental activities and demonstrating how configurable these nanosatellite systems can be to adapt to Defence needs,” Jessop said.
The ionosphere is no cake walk, with all manner of space junk potentially hitting the CubeSat or its antenna. The role of the selfie stick is to verify that the satellite’s antenna is intact and undamaged by debris, and is functioning as it should.
Defence said exploration of such “deployable components enables smaller and more versatile systems — important for small satellites with tight mass, volume, and power constraints.”
In other words: smaller, cheaper, and lighter satellites.
The Buccaneer Main Mission was now pursuing “stretch objectives”, Defence said, without going into detail.