2013.A.2.2 LunarCubes Initiative (LCI) : Events, Open Standards and Communities

Author(s)

Russell Cox (1), Pamela Clark (2), Abraham Vasant (1)

Flexure Engineering, USA
Catholic University of America

Session

A.2

Keywords

LunarCubes, cubesats

Abstract

The Initiative

The goal of LCI is to provide a theme and focus to extend the highly successful CubeSat model and standards into cislunar space and beyond, creating a venue for openSource standards and broad based training that will complete the transformation of CubeSats from a novel curiosity to a trusted standard and infrastructure for small sats throughout the solar system.

LCI Events

With events such as the LunarCubes workshop series the LCI will bring together investors and entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers and others to discuss methods and explore opportunities to extend cubeSats models and standards deeper into space, enabling more missions from more teams around the globe.

Open Standards

The LCI will promote an open source / open standards model that will allow for the rapid adoption of successful ideas and methods while allowing individuals and companies to control their key invasions that will be the foundation of their success.

Online Communities

The LCI will promote the creation of vibrant, open, global communities online and off to support and spread the excitement of exploration and discovery to researchers and the public around the world. This will begin with simple platforms like Facebook and Twitter and extend to structured public and private online communities to support specific, targeted communities to promote collaboration, exploration and success in the Lunar and planetary community.

This presentation will outline the two broad based initiatives : The LunarCube Initiative and The International Lunar Geophysical Year 2017-18 ( see http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2013/pdf/1564.pdf ) and the two supporting workshop series Lunar Superconductor Applications ( lsa2013.com ) and LunarCubes (LunarCubes.com ).

From this base we will build broad based, open, global, collaborative communities to extend deep space exploration to all mankind.