CubeSats for Gamma-Ray Astronomy
Peter F. Bloser (Los Alamos National Laboratory), David Murphy (Centre, for Space Research, School of Physics, University College Dublin),, Fabrizio Fiore (INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste), and Jeremy, Perkins (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

TL;DR
CubeSats are emerging as a cost-effective, rapid, and versatile platform for gamma-ray astronomy, enabling new scientific investigations and technological demonstrations in high-energy astrophysics.
Contribution
This paper reviews the current state, benefits, and future potential of CubeSats in gamma-ray astronomy, highlighting recent missions and scientific opportunities.
Findings
CubeSats enable in-orbit demonstrations of new gamma-ray detection techniques.
They are capable of detecting and localizing bright transients like gamma-ray bursts.
A growing portfolio of CubeSat missions is advancing high-energy astrophysics research.
Abstract
After many years of flying in space primarily for educational purposes, CubeSats - tiny satellites with form factors corresponding to arrangements of "1U" units, or cubes, each 10 cm on a side - have come into their own as valuable platforms for technology advancement and scientific investigations. CubeSats offer comparatively rapid, low-cost access to space for payloads that be built, tested, and operated by relatively small teams, with substantial contributions from students and early career researchers. Continuing advances in compact, low-power detectors, readout electronics, and flight computers have now enabled X-ray and gamma-ray sensing payloads that can fit within the constraints of CubeSat missions, permitting in-orbit demonstrations of new techniques and innovative high-energy astronomy observations. Gamma-ray-sensing CubeSats are certain to make an important contribution in…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsSpacecraft Design and Technology · Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae · Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena
