EDSN: A Large Swarm of Advanced Yet Very Affordable, COTS-based NanoSats that Enable Multipoint Physics and Open Source Apps

The NASA Office of the Chief Technologist’s (OCT) Small Spacecraft Technology Program (SSPT) has sponsored a 24-month, $11M project called Edison Demonstration of SmallSat Networks (EDSN). The goals of EDSN are to demonstrate a swarm of small, inexpensive satellites with novel on-orbit communications capabilities, and to demonstrate their suitability as a future platform for distributed Space Weather or other scientific measurements that require distributed, multipoint, time-synchronized measurements in low Earth orbit (LEO). EDSN will demonstrate the unique capabilities that a swarm of nanosatellites has to offer, both as a platform for distributed science data acquisition, and as a means of cost and risk reduction by virtue of being a functionally distributed system-of-systems. EDSN will demonstrate advanced communications, including cross-satellite ad-hoc data communications network, for extremely flexible data correlation and distribution, simplified operations, and efficient downlink of swarm data. EDSN will support a science instrument payload capable of measuring “space weather” data that, when combined with data taken from other members of the satellite swarm, can yield spatially and temporality correlated data maps impossible to acquire from a single satellite. Finally, EDSN will investigate the utility of commercial, off-the-shelf electronics (such as consumer grade smart phone for avionics) for use as capable, yet very inexpensive satellite components. The EDSN technologies will be validated during a planned 60-day operations period