On April 23rd, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched several satellites into low-Earth orbit including a 10-cm (3.9-inch) “origami” cube satellite with a reflectarray antenna that unfurls, origami-like, to 25 times its size when folded.
As the latest phase of JAXA’s Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program, at around 53 minutes after launch from New Zealand, the Kakushin (“innovation”) Rising mission orbitally deployed eight small satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit 336 miles (540 km) above Earth to further earthquake detection via electromagnetic precursors, ocean-monitoring, ultra-small camera multispectral photography, and other goals.
As New Atlas has previously explored, applying the principles of origami and the related art of kirigami (in which the folding material can be cut and reattached with glue or fasteners) has a long history in the industrial design of Japan and other countries.
Dr. Miura Koryo’s 1970 “Miura fold” design – used in large road maps for easy storage and use – arose during research into creating space-deployed structures, and operated in Japan’s 1995 Space Flyer Unit (SFU) satellite for orbital observation and experimentation. Stored Miura-style during flight, the SFU’s solar panels easily unfolded in orbit, and have been a model for subsequent SFU solar panel design ever since.
One of the solar sails of JAXA’s earlier IKAROS spacecraft
テレストレラッソ/C.C. 4.0
Similar designs underpin solar sailors, which Japanese designers call “space yachts” (referring to non-motorized yachts with sails), using photon-pressure against a solar sail instead of wind for propulsion, thus enabling space transit without rocket fuel (or even engines). In 2010, JAXA launched the first-ever small solar sailor IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) which travelled 50,200 miles (80,800 km) to Venus using its origami-folded sail.
Given the massive expense of launching anything into space, all space-seeking national governments, companies, and organizations are eager to save money any way they can. CubeSats, including those with Miura-folded mechanisms, offer massive savings. Back in the year 2000, the cost to build an ordinary weather satellite was $US290 million, and a spy satellite $390 M (not including maintenance), and additional $10 M to $400 M to launch.
On a large rocket, launch-cost-per-pound was more than $4,000, and on a small rocket $14,000. With its 60 feet (18 m)-long S-band antenna and solar panels spanning 106 feet (32 m), the 2009 commercial communication satellite TerreStar-1 weighed 15,233 lb (6.91 tonnes), cost $350 M to build and insure, and had to pay $165 M just to ride an Ariane 5 rocket.
The new JAXA CubeSat, before unfurling its antenna
JAXA
But teams of university students can develop CubeSats – which can weigh up to 22 lb (10 kg) and as little as 2.2 lb (1 kg) – for only a few thousand dollars in a short development and production cycle, and are light enough to be launched even from rockoons (rockets lifted to high altitude by stratospheric balloons) such as Zero 2 Infinity’s in-development Bloostar. If viable, Bloostar will be able to lift a 308-lb (140-kg) payload into a 125-mile (200-km) low-Earth orbit, or 165 lb (75 kg) to a 375-mile (600-km) Sun-synchronous orbit.
JAXA’s satellite origami-folded antenna employs technology with a history stretching back to the “chrome” era of the Soviet-US space race. It’s a low-cost reflectarray antenna, different from a traditional reflector antenna, which operates at high-gain for orbital and outer-space missions. Using a feed element (such as the rod in a parabolic dish antenna), a reflectarray can control the phase of the reflected field across its attached, passive, planar reflector surface to produce a focussed beam.
The CubeSat’s folding two-layer membrane is prepared for stowage prior to launch
JAXA
The April 23 Kakushin Rising mission marks the second time in five months that JAXA has used private space company Rocket Lab to launch satellites. With headquarters in Long Beach, California, Rocket Lab can launch vehicles from the USA as well as from its A and B launch pads on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula for its partly-recoverable, smaller payload, two-stage Electron rockets.
“Two successful missions in a matter of months, deployed precisely where they needed to be,” says Rocket Lab founder/CEO Sir Peter Beck, “shows exactly why Electron is the preferred small launcher for national space agencies” in a global CubeSat industry worth $355 M.
The Kakushin Rising liftoff in New Zealand
Rocket Lab
The company’s website boasts of being an “end-to-end space company” offering “reliable launch services, spacecraft, satellite components, and on-orbit management,” having deployed more than 250 satellites, and working with US government agencies such as NASA, Space Force, and DARPA, as well as companies such as Canon and Unseenlabs.
You can see more about JAXA’s origami CubeSat in the following Japanese-language video.
「革新的衛星技術実証4号機」が拓く未来の技術－折り紙リフレクトアレーアンテナ実証衛星 OrigamiSat-2
Sources: JAXA, Rocket Lab
AloJapan.com