2017.A.4.4. Team Miles: a CubeQuest deep space mission by citizen inventors

Author(s)

Wesley Faler (1)

Miles Space Inc., United States of America

Session

A.4

Keywords

Miles CubeQuest Team 6U

Abstract

Team Miles is a team of citizen inventors competing in the NASA CubeQuest Challenge. Our 6U cubesat’s trajectory passes near Mars using new Iodine thrusters, reaching nearly 100 million km from Earth. This presents a number of technical challenges for propulsion, navigation, attitude control, thermal management, communications, and autonomy plus more mundane, yet critical, challenges with a distributed team and documentation management as we design to man-rated mission standards. Our solutions are born of the maker movement first and classic aerospace second. The risks and rewards of this team structure will be highlighted as we discuss the latest mission design and its evolution, including feedback from NASA and our responses. We share these lessons hoping for collaboration and to accelerate the pace of other daring projects. (ITAR limits some technical depth so we will focus on the process.)