Better views with smaller satellites
A team of small, shoebox-sized satellites, flying in formation around the Earth, could estimate the planet’s reflected energy with twice the accuracy of traditional monolith satellites, according to an MIT-led study published online in Acta Astronautica. If done right, such satellite swarms could also be cheaper to build, launch, and maintain. The researchers, led by Sreeja Nag, a former graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), simulated the performance of a single large, orbiting satellite with nine sensors, compared with a cluster of three to eight small, single-sensor satellites flying together around the Earth. In particular, the team looked at how each satellite formation measures albedo, or the amount of light reflected from the Earth — an indication of how much heat the planet reflects. The team found that clusters of four or more small satellites were able to look at a single location on Earth from multiple angles,...