NinjaSat Spacecraft

Observing persistently bright X-ray objects. Study black holes and neutron stars.

Study black holes and neutron stars. NanoAvionics company provided its 6U satellite platform for the NinjaSat mission, and integrated it with a payload from Japanese research institute Riken that would track the X-ray photons these compact objects emit to explore how matter accretes to them.

After launching on SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 Transporter rideshare mission, NinjaSat would spend two years in LEO observing persistently bright X-ray objects. Targets include Scorpius X-1, a binary star system with a fast-spinning neutron star that makes it one of the brightest X-ray objects trackable from near-Earth orbit.

Riken, which is funding the mission, said NinjaSat will also follow up on observations of transient objects made by Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI), an X-ray camera mounted to the Japanese Experiment Module on the International Space Station.

“NinjaSat allows high cadence monitoring and flexible operations for such transient sources,” Riken chief scientist Toru Tamagawa said, “which are of great value in time-domain astronomy, covertly targeting critical scientific results as a ninja.”

Riken procured NinjaSat from Mitsui Bussan Aerospace (MBA), which facilitates access to the Japanese Experiment Module and brought NanoAvionics in as a subcontractor.

MBA CEO Sadayuki Osugi said NinjaSat is the first satellite in a partnership with NanoAvionics that aims to use the Lithuanian company’s technology for other customers in the Japanese market.
NinjaSat is designed to use two identical Gas Multiplier Counters for measuring individual radiation events, attached to each end of the side of the spacecraft pointed out to space. The spacecraft also has a pair of Radiation Belt Monitors to keep tabs on background particles, and a star tracker for positioning.

NanoAvionics has supplied its 6U M6P nanostellite bus for the mission, provided satellite testing services, and integrated the science payloads developed by RIKEN. The company has also supported the project as an advisor for nanosatellite technology. NanoAvionics will perform functional verification of the satellite bus immediately after launch

After the payload verification, NinjaSat observed the Crab Nebula on February 9 and correctly detected the 33.8 ms pulsation from the neutron star. With this observation, NinjaSat met the minimum success criteria. NinjaSat observed 10 X-ray sources by June 20 and successfully demonstrated that many Xray sources can be observed even with a CubeSat, which is limited in terms of resources available for science payloads.

Specifically, NinjaSat conducted the follow-up observation of a newly discovered X-ray transient SRGA J144459.2−604207 two days after its discovery, detecting multiple type I X-ray bursts. NinjaSat also observed type II X-ray bursts from a rapid burster MXB 1730−335. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first observations of X-ray bursts with a CubeSat, enabled by the large effective area of NinjaSat.

Evaldas Stulgaitis has written on LinkedIn: "For the past year, we've kept NinjaSat on target, ran payload checks, sent operational commands, and synced up with our customer six time zones away in Japan. We monitored solar activity, reacting to events like solar flares to protect the satellite and its instruments. Over time, we’ve successfully refined many of these tasks through various automations."

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