NEA Scout Thermal Control

The Near-Earth Asteroid Scout (NEA Scout) is a 6U CubeSat that will fly to a near earth asteroid using a solar sail. The mission is a joint project between NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The CubeSat will be deployed as a secondary payload during the Space Launch System Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1). The CubeSat will use an 86 m2 (925 ft2) aluminized polyimide solar sail for deep space propulsion. A multispectral camera will be used to characterize a small asteroid (<300 feet in diameter). The primary thermal architecture is a passive design with heaters to keep temperatures above the minimum allowable. Thermal vacuum testing was done on subsystems where possible. However for some long lead subsystems thermal vacuum testing will not be done till the final assembly.