AOSAT 1

AOSAT [Arizona State University]

AOSAT 1 (Asteroid Origins Satellite) is a 3U CubeSat science laboratory that will be the world’s first CubeSat centrifuge. It will enable a unique set of science and technology experiments to answer fundamental questions of how the solar system formed and understand the surface dynamics of asteroids and comets.

The 3U Cubesat platform will be a test bed for new technologies to land, explore and utilize the resources on asteroids. It will perform two experiments: primary accretion research, studying how particles aggregate to form large bodies including asteroids, planets and stars, and; asteroid regolith research, building a ‘patch of regolith’ out of representative material and spinning it up inside a centrifuge.

The payload consists of a centrifuge with stereo camera, piezolectric vibrator, nitrogen release, nitrogen bead deployer and a accretion seeder.

It was selected in 2015 by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) to be launched as part of the ELaNa program.