This weekend, NASA's mission operators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California lost contact with Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics or ASTERIA, a satellite designed to study exoplanets. The last successful communication with the spacecraft was in early December of last year. According to NASA's press release, the team will continue to reach ASTERIA until March.
READ: NASA's TESS Spacecraft Presents Panoramic View of Exoplanets
WHAT ARE CubeSats?
CubeSats are small spacecrafts -- technically called nanosatellites -- which are designed with basic dimensions of 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm and weigh less than 1.33 kilograms and were built as a tech demonstration mission showing that it is possible to shrink devices for studying exoplanets in a smaller scale. ASTERIA was launched on November 20, 2017, and is set to assist larger exoplanet missions like Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey or more commonly called as TESS.
During its heyday, ASTERIA was able to observe nearby stars and was able to demonstrate its ability to measure a star's brightness precisely. Using the data gathered from ASTERIA, astronomers were able to look for 'dips' in stars that means a planet is present in its orbit. This method is now known as the transit method (the same method used by the new TESS spacecraft).
Ever since NASA's tiny satellite ASTERIA completed its mission in February 2018, the spacecraft has continued to operate in three mission extensions where it was used as an in-space platform for testing various tasks that can make CubeSats like ASTERIA be more autonomous (some CubeSats are based on artificial intelligence programs). The spacecraft was also successful in making opportunistic observations of various elements of the universe like Earth, a comet passing through, other spacecraft, and stars that may serve as home to exoplanets.
WHAT HAPPENED TO NASA'S TINY SATELLITE ASTERIA?
NASA's tiny satellite ASTERIA is the first successfully launched CubeSat in space. Its goal is to achieve an arcsecond-level line-of-sight that can precisely point errors and highly stable control of focal plane temperature. These two are the most important piece of technology for precision photometry like measuring the brightness of a star over some time. This data will help astronomers in analyzing stellar activity and possible exoplanets transiting stars and other astrophysical events.
The ASTERIA satellite is a joint project by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory through its Phaeton Program. NASA's JPL is the one responsible for overall project management, systems engineering, spacecraft implementation, among other things. The ASTERIA project employed various companies for its completion including Blue Canyon Technologies and Vulcan Wireless, to name a few. The target selection and analysis of the photometry data were done by scientists from MIT and the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Although contact with ASTERIA is not yet regained, astronomers are still able to conduct experiments on CubeSats using the mission testbed which is a replica of the internal hardware found on ASTERIA and similar satellites. According to ASTERIA project manager Lorraine Fesq, the feat that the small spacecraft achieved within three months of its prime mission is outstanding. "Although we are disappointed that we lost contact with the spacecraft, we are thrilled with all that we have accomplished with this impressive CubeSat." She said.