GK "Geoskan" and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences presented the project of the first distributed solar observatory based on small satellites. Unlike multi-ton scientific spacecraft with limited access, the Russian constellation will be open to university and school students, TASS reports from the "Tekhnologii Geoskana" conference.
The observatory will be built on CubeSats deployed in low Earth orbit and at Lagrange points. The first spacecraft will be a satellite based on the "Geoskan 16U" platform, equipped with a mirror telescope for imaging in the vacuum ultraviolet.
We propose creating an inexpensive instrument with open access to observation time, data, and analytics
CubeSats have proven effective as full-fledged scientific platforms, and their low cost makes it possible to quickly upgrade instruments and test constellation control technologies.
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