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I didn't say it couldn't be used with CubeSats; I said that it could require the customer to use a lot of propellant to change the orbit if they wanted a differ
by azernik 9y ago
I didn't say it couldn't be used with CubeSats; I said that it could require the customer to use a lot of propellant to change the orbit if they wanted a different trajectory than the main customer or than the rest of the cluster.
That last option you mentioned could be helpful, but only for small orbit variations. If you want 10 cubesats in orbit with wildly different inclinations like many Earth Observation customers do, that's a bit inconvenient.
- planteen 9y agoYou can do quite a bit with timing on the launch vehicle. A delay of ~45 minutes in SSO is the opposite side of the planet. And do any of the Planet CubeSats even have propulsion? It looks like the Flock constellation deployed without it. http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htm
- THE_PUN_STOPS 9y agoMechanical Engineer working with CubeSats here. No CubeSat launched to date has carried a propulsion system. (Aside from air drag brakes to deorbit, I think someone launched at least one of those)
- planteen 9y agoThat's interesting none have launched with propulsion yet. I remember talk about the VACCO system when I was doing CubeSats a few years ago but it doesn't look like they are on-orbit yet.
- azernik 9y agoThat delay leaves you halfway around the planet, in the same orbit. Unless you give the satellite a good chunk of a kilometer/second of delta-v, you're not going to have any different of an inclination, and waiting half an orbit doesn't save you any propellant on apogee raising/lowering maneuvers for either permanent change of orbit or for phasing purposes.