RANGE Satellites

RANGE
RANGE
Spacecraft RANGE (Ranging And Nanosatellite Guidance Experiment)
Spacecraft type CubeSat
Units or mass 1.5U
Entity name Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)
Institution University
Entity Academic / Education
Nation US
Launch brokerer Spaceflight
Oneliner

Formation flying and inter-satellite laser ranging system, which also supports communications.

Description

Two CubeSats that will fly in a leader-follower formation. The on-board instrumentation will include state-of-the-art global positioning system (GPS) receivers, linked to miniaturized atomic clocks, for precise orbit determination. The relative positions of the satellites will be measured using a compact inter-satellite laser ranging system that will also double as a laser communications system.

Goal is to have at least one set of coincident ground-based satellite laser ranging, high-rate GPS, and inter-satellite laser ranging measurements. Potential to measure the relative distance between the satellites down to millimeters. Corner cube reflectors will allow the absolute and relative position estimates to be verified using ground-based satellite laser ranging (SLR) measurements provided by the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS).

Sources [1] [2] [3] [4]
Photo sources [1] [2] [3]
Keywords Formation flying, Laser transmitter

Related Spacecraft

Name Status Rocket Date Orbit
RANGE-A (Ranging And Nanosatellite Guidance Experiment) Semi-operational? (Website only says it is in mission operations phase. Last SatNOGS report with data2023-05-02 but repetitive data. Possibly some nominal packets from 2020. Last checked 2023-06-10) Falcon 9, (Spaceflight SSO-A, SHERPA) 2018-12-03 580 km, 97.8 deg
RANGE-B (Ranging And Nanosatellite Guidance Experiment) Semi-operational? (Website only says it is in mission operations phase. Last SatNOGS report with data 2023-06-07 but repetitive data. Last checked 2023-06-10) Falcon 9, (Spaceflight SSO-A, SHERPA) 2018-12-03 580 km, 97.8 deg

Last modified: 2024-05-29

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Created by Erik Kulu

Email: erik.kulu@nanosats.eu
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/erikkulu

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