Small cosmic probes using solar energy can become the future of science. A team of scientists from the University of California at Berkeley presented project “Bliss: Interplanetary research using inexpensive spacecraft.” Miniature devices will work on Linux.
“The Bliss project is designed to demonstrate that miniaturization technologies allow you to get unprecedented capabilities in space,” the article says.
Bliss devices, weighing only 10 grams, are smaller than 1.33-kilogram Cubesats, which are currently the smallest artificial satellites of the Earth. The microzonds are equipped with a board with microcircuits that is connected to the solar battery. The design is towed with a large solar sail. The device also includes microelectromechanical systems to control the sail, an inertial measuring unit for determining rotation, and a lithium-polymer battery. The project budget will be less than $1000.
The authors note the complexity of producing large solar sails. Even moving Cubesats requires hundreds of square meters of sailing. “For a 10-gram spacecraft, a 1-meter solar sail sail is the most practical engine option,” they say.
The first suitable mission for microzonds, according to experts, may be the study of ten to several hundred objects close to the ground. As an example, they modeled the path to Asteroid Benn, which was already visited by the NASA OSIRIS-REX device in 2020. Based on calculations, Bliss devices would have needed a little more than 5 years to travel in both directions. In comparison, the OSIRIS-REX mission took a little more than seven years (2,572 days), and the samples will be delivered to Earth only in September of this year. The program budget is approximately $1.2 billion.
After the first test launch, the Bliss team plans to collect materials from thousands of comets of the Jupiter family. According to the plan, this mission can be completed over the next decade with the help of 10-gram ships.
However, there are flaws. For example, the authors of the project note: “The budget for the mass of the spacecraft does not allow for effective protection of electronics from radiation.” Nevertheless, they are confident that “carefully