MXL team members and alumni attended the first Interplanetary CubeSat (iCubeSat) Workshop last week. The workshop took place at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was coordinated by students from MIT, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan.
The workshop drew participants from academia (MIT, Stanford, Michigan, Cornell, Univ. of Florida, North Dakota, Cal Poly), industry (AGI, Sinclair, Planetary Resources, ULA, etc.), and NASA centers (JPL, Ames).
Highlights included NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck’s talk on NASA’s perspective on small satellites, and MIT professor (and advisor to Planetary Resources) Sara Seager‘s discussion of the potential for small satellites to accomplish novel and exciting science goals. A wide variety of technical presentations were also conducted, and are available here. MXL presented a paper on optimal operational scheduling, as applied to an example interplanetary mission.
We look forward to next year’s workshop, to take place at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.