Project Tin Tin - practical interstellar cubesat

[Retired_for_now]

Found some fascinating briefs from the Icarus Interstellar 2013 Workshop Schedule | Icarus Interstellar . The near-term projects along the real axis (as opposed to imaginary) are various light sails and this Project Tin Tin | Icarus Interstellar , a cubesat based interstellar probe appropriately named project Tin Tin. Lots of detail in the linked paper on the project site just above.

From Dr Tziolas paper: Currently there are no interstellar exploration missions planned or in progress. Even the Voyager spacecraft will not pass close to a neighboring solar system for tens of thousands of years. The pursuit of deep space and interstellar exploration studies has recently become a matter of critical debate, with Icarus Interstellar and the 100 Year Star Ship (100 YSS) program drawing attention to the merits of pressing the boundaries of current and near future technologies towards such goals. Project Tin Tin is a mission profile and spacecraft design feasibility program which aims to establish the science, propulsion, communications, power and materials which will be used to build interstellar precursor missions using cubesats. The mission objectives are (a) to establish a program of utilizing space systems miniaturization technologies, (b) to create a template mission and spacecraft package for space-proofing interstellar systems and (c) to launch the first ever interstellar spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. In this paper and presentation we establish that an interstellar journey to our nearest star is feasible within 25,000 years using current technology, cutting Voyager’s best time to a nearest star by a factor of 1/3, with reasonable room for improvements.

Posted in the downloads: Real Space/Concepts

Yogi

[legion]

Maybe I'm turning psychic, but I'm building the AAU Cubesat right now...

[Retired_for_now]

You are just ahead of the curve - surfin' the wave!

There are several detailed cubesat models in addition to the AAU (Aalborg U) kit: UKube from the UK space agency, BRITE from Universitat Wien, CUTE-I from Tokyo Tech, DTU Sat from Danmarks Tekniske, and Sun Sat from Stellenbosch in S Africa to name a few. Happy Googling!

Yogi

[legion]

I'm building the Pro model from the Aalborg site. Its instructions and parts are slightly off though, Part C is supposed to go on the bottom and is way oversized. I printed the last page at 75/80% to get it to look right. The original Part C however can be used for the side solar panels, it is the right size for those.

[Retired_for_now]

Legion,
Not sure which version I've done, it has the box, corner pillars, and coiled antennae. I didn't have any scale issues with that one. I did notice a comment on the first page about making sure to print actual size in Adobe, not fit to page. Regardless, sounds like you have made it work.
Yogi

[legion]

It is a cute little model and I already was in a cubism mode. I made some custom scale cubes for my website: Scale blocks Total Annihilation Papercrafts

[Retired_for_now]

Interesting development. Sent the model to Dr Tziolas at Icarus Interstellar and received a nice thank you note - asking if they could use the model for promotion and if more could be designed. Obviously a yes to both with my usual educational excuse, sorry I meant objective.
Yogi