BLISS: Interplanetary Exploration with Swarms of Low-Cost Spacecraft
Alexander N. Alvara, Lydia Lee, Emmanuel Sin, Nathan Lambert, Andrew, J. Westphal, and Kristofer S.J. Pister

TL;DR
This paper proposes a fleet of tiny, low-cost solar sail spacecraft for rapid interplanetary exploration, detailing hardware, control systems, and potential applications like asteroid and comet missions.
Contribution
It introduces a novel design for a nearly 10 g spacecraft with a 1 m² solar sail and MEMS actuators, enabling scalable, autonomous interplanetary exploration.
Findings
Design of a 10 g spacecraft with 1 m² solar sail
Trajectory control to asteroid Bennu demonstrated
Discussion of scaling limits and future autonomous sail technology
Abstract
Leveraging advancements in micro-scale technology, we propose a fleet of autonomous, low-cost, small solar sails for interplanetary exploration. The Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail (BLISS) project aims to utilize small-scale technologies to create a fleet of tiny interplanetary femto-spacecraft for rapid, low-cost exploration of the inner solar system. This paper describes the hardware required to build a nearly 10 g spacecraft using a 1 m solar sail steered by micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) inchworm actuators. The trajectory control to a NEO, here 101955 Bennu, is detailed along with the low-level actuation control of the solar sail and the specifications of proposed onboard communication and computation. Two other applications are also shortly considered: sample return from dozens of Jupiter-family comets and interstellar comet rendezvous and imaging. The paper…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstro and Planetary Science · Spacecraft Dynamics and Control · Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence
