On-Orbit Performance of the Bright Target Explorer (BRITE) Nanosatellite Astronomy Constellation

In 2013, the first three satellites of the BRITE-Constellation mission, believed to be the world’s first satellite constellation dedicated to astronomy, were placed into orbit on two separate launches. To be eventually composed of at least six cooperating nanosatellites, BRITE-Constellation’s mission is to perform a survey of the most luminous stars in the Earth’s sky. In the push to observe ever fainter objects, these apparently bright stars, despite being prominent members of our most familiar constellations, have been poorly studied and are not well understood. Typically massive and short lived, through their turbulent lives and via their especially violent deaths as supernovae, these stars dominate the ecology of the Universe and are responsible for seeding the interstellar medium with elements critical for the formation of planetary systems and organic life. Using three-centimeter aperture telescopes for differential photometry, BRITE-Constellation measures brightness variations, in two colours, at the millimagnitude level, a precision at least 10 times better than what is currently achievable from ground based observations. Comprised of nearly-identical 7-kg nanosatellites, BRITE-Constellation was designed by the University of Toronto, Institute for Aerospace Studies, Space Flight Laboratory (UTIAS-SFL) of Canada. Each of three countries, Austria, Poland, and Canada, funded two of the six satellites. Three of these satellites were integrated and tested in Austria and Poland under the guidance of SFL personnel, while the other three were built and tested at SFL. Through this international collaboration, the constellation boasts not just the smallest astronomy satellites ever flown, but also the first Austrian spacecraft and the first scientific satellites for Poland. As such, the mission has garnered a tremendous amount of public support and interest in all countries involved, and generally world-wide. As a result of the inherent mass, volume, data, power and financial constraints, performing a mission of BRITEConstellation’s scope on the nanosatellite scale was particularly challenging. Not least among the challenges was the need to point the spacecraft with an accuracy and stability never previously achieved with a spacecraft so small. Enabled by advances in miniaturized technology, precise characterization and tuning of attitude hardware and novel estimation and control techniques, BRITE-Constellation is now pushing the nanosatellite performance envelope by achieving three-axis pointing at the sub arc-minute level, an advance which has helped ensure BRITE-Constellation will provide substantial scientific return on investment in the years to come. This paper describes the goals, key design and operational challenges, on-orbit performance, and early scientific results of this cutting-edge mission.

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