A Deployable Telescope for CubeSat Platforms

Spaceborne telescopes have proven to be valuable tools for scientific exploration and commercial endeavors in space. Their advantages are rapidly evident thanks to the circumvention of earth-bound limitations such as atmospheric disturbances, local weather, lunar cycles, and the growing light pollution produced by Earth-orbiting spacecraft. However, currently, space-based telescope systems present significant engineering challenges and are limited to large, costly spacecraft. This elevates the barriers to space access for smaller research endeavors, emerging fields, and studies that require distributed sensor networks. Such efforts do not typically require large observatories and are currently partially supported by communities of amateur telescope operators and small research facilities. Opening space to such communities with lower cost and less complex space telescopes would accelerate discoveries in fields such as Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), super-nova detection, and full sky surveys. Additionally, such technology would broaden access to high-performance Earth and Moon observations. The CubeSat standard has revolutionized the spacecraft industry, acting as a development catalyst for spacecraft designs and missions by reducing cost and mission lead time. We present a deployable telescope payload in the six-inch aperture contained within an 8U (2 * 2 * 2U) standard CubeSat payload volume and that would integrate into a 16U CubeSat. As a deployable structure, the optical assembly enables the integration of proven optical technologies within the versatility of the CubeSat framework, offering a solution to bridge the existing gap in space telescope platforms. In addition to the small launch package, the proposed design integrates opportunities for functional modularity, utilizing a dual focal system for field of view flexibility. This allows a single unit to satisfy multiple mission types, such as long single-target observations and full sky surveying. Long deployable booms support a baffle for small solar exclusion angles. The proposed complete unit spacecraft is standardized around a 16U CubeSat with optical and mechanical components designed to enable robotic docking, such as space assembly of telescopes, allowing the construction of larger optical systems, or in space substitution of primary sensors through light path re-direction. Using such a superstructure or formation flight methods can mimic performance of larger aperture telescopes or diversify observed objects and missions. The performance of the system was analyzed, and experimentation demonstrated that these small apertures present real benefits to space science, which can be enhanced by placing multiple proposed units in space.