The Artemis project: Picosatellites and the feasibility of the smaller, faster, cheaper approach

The Santa Clara Remote Extreme Environment Mechanism (SCREEM) Laboratory is developing small satellites as part of its educational program. The cost restrictions associated with larger satellites and available miniaturized technology provide the impetus for focusing on micro-spacecraft. This motivates the question of how small spacecraft can be while still being useful. Related to this is the use of small spacecraft constellations to perform a mission collaboratively. Artemis, a student satellite team from Santa Clara University, is exploring the feasibility of these spacecraft. An extreme vision of this picosatellite technology is a cluster of multiple sub-kilogram spacecraft that has been proposed for missions such as magnetosphere science and local inspection. Santa Clara University is currently exploring these concepts through a picosatellite development program. The Artemis team is building multiple picosatellites for Stanford University´s OPAL (Orbiting Picosatellite Automatic Launcher) in an attempt to analyze lightning-induced atmospheric fluctuations and to verify mothership-daughtership technologies. This paper motivate the use of picosatellite-based missions, present the current design of the Santa Clara University picosatellites, and discuss the project approaches and challenges