One of the advantages of CubeSat technology is its low cost, allowing designing large constellations of satellites. These constellations used from Low Earth Orbit increase naturally the revisit rate. However, one of the remaining technical limitations of Cubesat technology in high-resolution observation is the ability to use large telescopes. To deliver jointly high revisit rate and high angular resolution, ONERA proposes the concept of a deployable 30 cm diameter telescope fitting into a 1.5 U volume.
The primary mirror is composed of four petals controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven Active Optics (AO) system for high spatial resolution. The secondary mirror is deployed from the same initial volume. AZIMOV [1] targets an image resolution under 1 meter at 500 km altitude for a gain of mass of a factor 10 compare with satellites of similar resolution and swath.
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| Left, a 3 U Cubesat carrying the deployable and active AZIMOV telescope. Right, the resolution image versus satellite mass and swath for several missions. The aim is to reach high ground resolution with a low-cost satellite. | ||
[1] AZIMOV - AutomatiZatIon of MOVable optics for high resolution observations, HORIZON-EIC-2021-PATHFINDEROPEN-01- AZIMOV