NASA’s V-R3x CubeSats Launched Into Orbit Aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Transporter-1

Researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center recently launched its V-R3x CubeSats into low Earth orbit aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Transporter-1 rocket in an effort to navigate multiple spacecraft autonomously using radio networking and navigation. The V-R3x mission features three of the tiny satellites that NASA plans to use to demonstrate new technologies and techniques that, if successful, will be implemented for future multi-spacecraft exploration missions.

The trio of CubeSats will engage low-SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) autonomous high-speed cross-linking (using S-band radio), ranging, coordinated radiation measurements, and relative topology recovery as a means to network and navigate in space. To accomplish those tasks, NASA designed the V-R3x CubeSats using the PyCubed open source, radiation-tested hardware and software framework, which packs ADCS, TT&C, C&DH, and EPS into a single PC104-compatible module that’s programmed exclusively in Python.

The PyCubed motherboard features an ATSAMD51J20A-AU microcontroller, a MAX706RS-T watchdog timer, LSM9DS1 IMU, and an RFM98PW radio module. It also includes flash memory for data storage, an LTC4121 energy harvester, and an ADM1176 power monitor. NASA states the heart of the tech demo will rely on the S-band radio to provide the high-speed cross-link and ranging applications, while a high-altitude balloon equipped with another V-R3x CubeSat (to be launched in February) will verify the link parameters and ranging performance.

“Both experiments will show the ability for small satellites to be in communication with each other across vast distances, maintain spatial awareness relative to each other, coordinate to collect data, and speedily share that data with each other,” NASA notes in a recent press release. It will be interesting to see how the V-R3x mission will pan-out in the long term and if other space agencies worldwide will follow suit.