Swarms of Tiny Satellites Could Act Like One Giant Space Telescope
New research shows that swarms of tiny satellites working together act like one giant space telescope, achieving high-resolution imagery without massive costs.
New research from Ben-Gurion University shows that swarms of tiny satellites working in concert replace or augment giant space telescopes like James Webb. These small spacecraft move across space capturing images to produce imagery that mimics a much larger camera through a synthetic aperture system.
The research, published in Optica, details how two satellites move in synchrony around a circle's edge and beam data to a third stationary satellite. Graduate student Angika Bulbul discovers that using just a tiny fraction of the perimeter aperture achieves similar resolution to a full aperture, essentially delivering the results of a camera 50 times its actual size.
This approach slashes the cost, time, and materials needed for gigantic optical space telescopes. Separately, MIT researchers propose a "guide star" satellite that sits thousands of miles out and trains a strong laser to provide a reliable reference point for other satellites that need extreme precision measurements.