NinTH ANNUAL LUNARCUBES WORKSHOP
May 7 & 8, 2020
We are looking forward to the 2020 LunarCubes Workshop (the 9th Annual!) generously sponsored and hosted by the Cubesat Developers Workshop at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo again this year. Our dates, May 7 and 8, Thursday and Friday, immediately follow the CDW (May 4 to 6). For even more excitement, immediately following our workshop, after a weekend of wine-tasting, you can attend the Interplanetary Smallsat Conference to be held at CalTech in Pasadena this year on May 11 and 12. Soon, ISSC will be posting a webpage as well.
Yes, this is an exciting time to be holding an interactive workshop to propose solutions and identify challenges for cubesats in deep space. The Lucky 13 deep space cubesats, including three with specific goals of mapping lunar volatiles, will be delivered to NASA in late Spring of 2020, probably about the time of this workshop. NASA continues to announce new opportunities for small payloads on commercial lunar landers and orbiters. As a result, even more thinking is going on about how high priority requirements can be met within cubesat paradigm constraints (low-cost, compact, rapid development, lean operations, essential measurements, shared tools, higher risk), and deliberate efforts to capture and implement ‘lessons learned’, applied to development approach, teaming, requirements review, parts selection and qualification, operational approaches, shared testing and documentation tools, are emerging.
MEETING GOALS
Our primary goal is to bring together scientists and payload developers who drive requirements with those who develop state of the art components, new infrastructures and programs, and who must know end user needs and payload requirements so we can break new ground way beyond LEO! This year, we will have a session devoted to reporting on and then discussing the implications of new hardware and software tools to support the cubesat/smallsat paradigm. The results of this discussion will be incorporated in the design challenge activities which follow.
Thus, as I’ve said before: Scientists and Technologists who have proposed and in some cases been selected to launch cubesat missions and payloads, here is your chance to meet with the many engineering folks, who know the challenges and evolving solutions well, who come to the Cubesat Developers Workshop! Come and offer your seemingly insurmountable challenges and potentially brilliant solutions!
More details on challenges will follow... please send your ideas (for challenges) and abstracts in the meantime.
MEETING PARTICIPATION
This is a small (30-40) and highly interactive workshop in which all participate (in small groups and the larger group). The program, though still focusing on hands-on interactions for design challenges (concepts and solutions) for topics of interest, will include a small number of short formal presentations of potential deep space cubesat concepts, technology, engineering, or programmatic solutions relevant to the design challenges. Those wishing to present should notify the technical program chair (pamela.e.clark@jpl.nasa.gov). If you wish to present, you should submit an abstract by March 1 by clicking on the link to ‘abstract’ on this page. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words and include answers to the questions asked on the form. We welcome suggestions for design challenges and willingness to lead challenges. Please email these intentions to the technical program chair (Pamela.E.Clark@jpl.nasa.gov). We will focus on several areas of interest with emphasis indicated by attendees, with final program developed based on abstracts and proposed challenges.
REGISTRATION
You will need to register by clicking on the ‘registration’ link on this page. This is not a formally ‘NASA-sponsored’ event, so the 60 day in advance forecast with NASA (or JPL) does not apply. However, we need an idea of how many will be attending so we can arrange for a large enough room. The LCW registration deadline is March 1, although we will take ‘late’ requests as long as space allows. We do recommend that you register for and attend the Cubesat Developers Workshop as well, as they are our sponsor (thus the LCW has no registration fee).
LOGISTICS
You can use the Cubesat Developers Workshop website to search for lodging, and deal with logistics, including parking.
PRODUCTS
To amplify our efforts, we will generate a white paper after the meeting, with some form of elaboration of issues raised and resolved or requiring further collaboration to resolve. Also, we hope to form collaborative cross-disciplinary teams from our discussions.
NEXT STEPS
Email indicating your interest as soon as possible! We need to estimate how many will attend AND how many would like to present/lead a design challenge.