The Versatile CubeSat Telescope: Going to Large Apertures in Small Spacecraft

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile, cost-effective CubeSat telescope platform with a 95 mm aperture, optimized for performance and stability, suitable for various space applications including astronomy and Earth imaging.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel all-aluminum CubeSat telescope design with a new performance characterization tool and detailed analysis of thermal, structural, and launch considerations.

Findings

Achieved diffraction-limited performance with a 95 mm aperture

Developed a performance degradation characterization tool

Demonstrated thermal stability and launch survivability

Abstract

The design of a CubeSat telescope for academic research purposes must balance complicated optical and structural designs with cost to maximize performance in extreme environments. Increasing the CubeSat size (eg. 6U to 12U) will increase the potential optical performance, but the cost will increase in kind. Recent developments in diamond-turning have increased the accessibility of aspheric aluminum mirrors, enabling a cost-effective regime of well-corrected nanosatellite telescopes. We present an all-aluminum versatile CubeSat telescope (VCT) platform that optimizes performance, cost, and schedule at a relatively large 95 mm aperture and 0.4 degree diffraction limited full field of view stablized by MEMS fine-steering modules. This study features a new design tool that permits easy characterization of performance degradation as a function of spacecraft thermal and structural disturbances. We will present details including the trade between on- and off-axis implementations of the VCT, thermal stability requirements and finite-element analysis, and launch survival considerations. The VCT is suitable for a range of CubeSat borne applications, which provides an affordable platform for astronomy, Earth-imaging, and optical communications.