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The future of astronomy with small satellites

Nature Astronomy volume 4, pages 1031–1038 (2020)Cite this article

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The number of small satellites has grown hugely in the past decade, from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for observational astronomy. Small satellites offer complementary cost-effective capabilities to both ground-based astronomy and larger space missions. Compared with ground-based astronomy, these advantages are not just in the accessibility of wavelength ranges where the Earth’s atmosphere is opaque, but also in stable, high-precision photometry, long-term monitoring and improved areal coverage. Astronomy has a long history of new observational parameter spaces leading to major discoveries. Here we discuss the potential for small satellites to explore new parameter spaces in astrophysics, drawing on examples from current and proposed missions, and spanning a wide range of science goals from binary stars, exoplanets and Solar System science to the early Universe and fundamental physics.

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Fig. 1: Atmospheric opacity.
Fig. 2: Exoplanet transit observations by the ASTERIA mission.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the participants of the Springer Nature symposium ‘Future of astronomy with small satellites’ organized in London, November 2019, for contributions and for inspiring some of this Perspective. S.S. also thanks K. Olsson-Francis and H. Dickinson for discussions, the UK Space Agency for support under grant ST/T003502/1, and the ESCAPE project. ESCAPE — The European Science Cluster of Astronomy & Particle Physics ESFRI Research Infrastructures has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 824064.

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  1. School of Physical Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Stephen Serjeant

  2. Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Martin Elvis

  3. Centre for Space Exoplanet Data (CSED), University College London, London, UK

    Giovanna Tinetti

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Correspondence to Stephen Serjeant.

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Serjeant, S., Elvis, M. & Tinetti, G. The future of astronomy with small satellites. Nat Astron 4, 1031–1038 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-020-1201-5

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