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Cislunar Explorers
Cislunar Explorers [Cornell University]
Cislunar Explorers is a planned nanosat mission by Cornell University, which was selected by NASA's CubeQuest Challenge.
The Cislunar Explorers are a pair of streamlined, sustainable spacecraft on a mission to orbit the Moon. They act as self-propelled engineering demonstrations, proving the technology readiness of water as rocket fuel, simple optical navigation, and more. Key subsystems complement each other in a symbiotic design aimed at reducing the cost and complexity of space exploration.
Cislunar Explorers consists of two L-shaped satellites, which fit together in the 6U CubeSat standard.
Cislunar Explorers was one of 13 cubesats planned to be carried with the Artemis 1 (Orion CM-002) mission into a heliocentric orbit in cis-lunar space on the maiden flight of the SLS (Block 1) iCPS launch vehicle in November 2022. In August 2021 it was announced, that Cislunar Explorers won't be ready in time for the Artemis-1 mission.
| Nation: | USA |
|---|---|
| Type / Application: | Technology, lunar orbiter |
| Operator: | Cornell University |
| Contractors: | Cornell University |
| Equipment: | |
| Configuration: | CubeSat (6U) |
| Propulsion: | Electrolysis Propulsion truster |
| Power: | Solar cells, batteries |
| Lifetime: | |
| Mass: | ~14 kg |
| Orbit: | Solar orbit |
| Satellite | COSPAR | Date | LS | Launch Vehicle | Remarks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cislunar Explorer A | - | 202x | with ?, Cislunar Explorer B | |||
| Cislunar Explorer B | - | 202x | with ?, Cislunar Explorer A |
