UNMANNED SPACE CONCEPTS

Microspacecraft concepts

Picosats and Cansats

A great interest I have in microspacecraft led to a host of design concepts for low cost exploration of the solar system with massive redundancy. A number of hardware prototypes have also been built, to test the validitiy of some of the concepts.

Numerous concepts have been developed, involving vehicles that fall into a small form factor category known as Picosats, and including spacecraft and miniature landers and roving surface vehicles.

Propulsion systems investigated have included chemical propulsion, electric propulsion, solar sails, solar thermal propulsion and also propulsion using compact electromagnetic rail-guns for initial accelleration and then deploying solar sails.