Russian specialists have presented the concept of the world's first distributed space observatory for solar observation, assembled from small CubeSat-format satellites. The project was developed jointly by the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Geoscan company.
The new system will consist of a group of inexpensive microsatellites equipped with a complex of scientific instruments: X-ray telescopes and spectrophotometers, ultraviolet telescopes, optical coronagraphs, and photometers.
The spacecraft are planned to be placed both in low Earth orbits and at Lagrange points – remote zones of gravitational equilibrium in the Earth-Sun system.
Unlike existing multi-ton solar observatories, access to which is limited, the Russian development implies an open usage model. This will allow researchers, students, and even schoolchildren to conduct experiments and study space phenomena independently.
The first spacecraft of the future observatory will be a CubeSat based on the Geoscan 16U platform with a mirror telescope for operation in the vacuum ultraviolet range. This satellite will lay the foundation for the deployment of the entire distributed system.