Cover Image for Interview: Cubesat Architecture in the New Space Race

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Interview: Cubesat Architecture in the New Space Race

Small Steps & Giant Leaps Events

Zoom

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About Event

(photo credit NASA)

Agenda

12:00pm to 1:00pm PST

Special speaker

12:00pm to 1:00pm PST

Mixer/discussion/introductions (not recorded/broadcast)

Description

A satellite launches folded up. Solar arrays, antennas, booms, sails, telescope apertures—all of it has to survive the shake and slam of launch packed into a box, then unfold in vacuum on command and stay rigid for years. There's no service call. There's no second attempt. Deployment is the single most unforgiving moment in a spacecraft's life.

The Small Steps & Giant Leaps community is gathering for a technical conversation about deployable structures and mechanisms—the hardware that lets small spacecraft punch far above their launch volume.

Expect substantive conversations on:

Deployment mechanisms—hinges, booms, springs, and release devices that have to work the first time
Stowed volume vs. deployed aperture and why packing efficiency drives mission design
Solar sails and large, ultra-lightweight deployed surfaces
Deployable optics and antennas—getting big apertures out of small buses
Materials, friction, and cold welding in vacuum, where Earth intuitions fail
Testing on the ground for an event that only happens once, in a gravity field you can't remove

And the question worth sitting with: every serious vision of humanity living in space—rotating habitats, O'Neill cylinders, structures kilometers across—runs into the same wall. You can't launch it assembled. Whatever we eventually build out there will get to orbit folded, packed, or in pieces, and it will have to open up on its own. The mechanisms deploying a solar sail today are the earliest ancestors of the ones that will unfold a world.

Every big thing humanity puts in orbit starts out small and folded. Come talk to the people who make it open.

Speaker(s)

Brett Muir: Brett Muir is the founder of CubeSource, a Calgary-based company building affordable, open-source hardware to support CubeSat developers. He studied physics at the University of Calgary, where he also ran a woodworking business on the side — a detail that came full circle a decade later. As part of CalgaryToSpace's structural team, Brett helped build FrontierSat, the University of Calgary's first student-designed satellite. When the campus machine shop closed just before the satellite had to ship to a European Space Agency facility in Belgium for testing, it was the tools from that old woodworking business that let the team work until 2 a.m. and finish assembly on time. That night sparked CubeSource, and Brett's mission to grow Canada's aerospace talent — particularly in his home province of Alberta.
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/muirbrett/
- https://www.cubesource.space/

SSGL Best Practices

Open Door Policy
- Feel free to join or leave as you like, but make sure you are muted when you do so you do not disturb the conversation.
Be Respectful
- Take turns & let others speak. SSGL has a zero tolerance policy for any bullying or trolling. Disagreeing is OK, but stay civil.
Be Yourself
- You will be asked to introduce yourself. If you do not introduce yourself when asked you may be removed without warning. If you would like to remain anonymous you must message Alder beforehand to not be removed.
Share Your Data
- SSGL is a data-driven community! We discuss wild topics from mega-structures to terraforming to life on other planets, but we always want the conversation to be based in data. Be prepared to look up links or PDFs to papers and articles to back up claims.
Space is for Everyone!
- Invite your friends to SSGL! The more diversity of viewpoints, backgrounds, and life experiences we have in space the sooner we will 𝗮𝗹𝗹 reach the stars.