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OLFAR, a radio telescope based on nano satellites in moon orbit

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OLFAR, A RADIO TELESCOPE BASED ON NANO-SATELLITES IN MOON ORBIT

S. Engelen, C.J.M. Verhoeven
Technical University of Delft, Faculty of Aeospace Engineering – Space System Engineering
Kluyverweg 1, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands
[email protected], [email protected]

M.J. Bentum
University of Twente, Faculty of EEMCS, Short Range Radio Chair,
P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
ASTRON, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands
[email protected], tel.:+31 53 4892108
ABSTRACT
It seems very likely that missions with nano-satellites in professional scientific or commercial applications will not
be single-satellite missions. Well structured formations or less structured swarms of nano-satellites will be able to
perform tasks that cannot be done in the “traditional” way. The Dutch space-born radio telescope project OLFAR,
the Orbiting Low Frequency Array, is a good example of a typical “swarm-task”. The OLFAR radio telescope will
be composed of an antenna array based on nano-satellites orbiting the moon to shield the receiving nodes from
terrestrial interference. The array will receive frequencies in a band from around 30 kHz to 30 MHz. This frequency
band is scientifically very interesting, since it will be able to detect signals originating from the yet unseen “Dark
Ages” ranging from the Big Bang until around 400 million year after. Another science driver is the LF activity from
(exo) planets.

In this paper the design parameters for the satellites and the swarm will be given and status of the OLFAR project
will be reported. Details will be given about the antenna system, the LF-receiver and the signals that are expected.

INTRODUCTION Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware, opportunities for

solving these issues are slowly becoming a reality.
Ever since Karl Jansky detected radio signals from
OLFAR, the Orbiting Low Frequency Array, intends to
space, there’s been an active and thriving astronomical
use these opportunities to build a large, low frequency
community mapping and investigating as much of the
electromagnetic spectrum as possible. Unfortunately (at array in space. In order to limit the cost of each node,
least for astronomers), the atmosphere is not transparent the spacecraft will be built as swarm elements, which
for the full spectrum, requiring space missions to fill in incidentally will allow an increase in science output,
the gaps. whilst significantly lowering the operational cost of the
mission.
ESA and NASA have been focussing on building
In this paper we will address the OLFAR space
spacecraft for observations in the very high frequency
segment. First a brief overview of the science is given,
bands (e.g. Herschell, Planck), yet the only spacecraft
ever launched to observe the low-frequency part of the after which the design parameters of the satellites will
spectrum were the Radio Astronomy Explorer’s 1 and be defined. One important result is that no clear
2. Initially, RAE 1 was placed in earth orbit, but the definition of a spacecraft swarm exists; hence that issue
interference proved too high. RAE 2 (1) was therefore will be addressed.
placed in lunar orbit. The results were extremely
THE SCIENCE CASE FOR OLFAR
promising, but it lacked depth, due to the fact the
satellite only had a single antenna. No real hardware As one of the last under-explored regions of the
has been developed since, even though countless paper electromagnetic spectrum, the ultra-long wavelength
studies( (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)) highlighted the interesting range (1000 - 10m) remains a region with great
aspects of access to a low frequency observatory in potential for scientific enquiries. Amongst them are
space. studies of the dark ages, tomographic studies of the
interstellar medium, and observations of emissions by
Lately however, due to the lowering cost of access to planets and even nearby exo-planets (3).
space, and the increased applicability of Commercial

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Earth’s ionosphere however severely distorts any radio Spatial resolution at 1 MHz 0.35 degrees
emissions below 50 MHz, and it completely blocks Snapshot integration time 1s
Sensitivity Confusion limited
emissions below 30 MHz, indicating the only feasible Instantaneous bandwidth TBD
way for studying these emissions is through a space Deployment location Moon orbit, Earth-Moon L2 or
mission (4). The rather serendipitous discovery of the so- Sun-Earth L4/5
called Auroral Kilometric Radiation (AKR) by the
earth-orbiting Radio Astronomy Explorer 1 (RAE-1) (9)
Studies performed on the DARIS mission (11) show that
showed high sensitivity studies were impossible to be
in order to perform useful science, only 7 active nodes
performed from earth-orbit. RAE-2 was therefore
are required, and that a dipole of two monopole
launched into lunar orbit, to allow shielding by the
antennas of 2.5 m are sufficient. Moreover, the dipoles
moon. As an added bonus for the Moon orbiting array,
require a cross-sectional area of only 1 mm2, allowing
the moon acts as a high energy particle detector (3),
for a lightweight solution. Increasing the integration
increasing the predicted science output of a science
time would be beneficial, yet is dependent on the
orbiter.
stability of the relative positioning of the elements in
An extensive overview of astronomical science is given their orbits.
in the paper by Jester (3).
For a swarm satellite, drifting out of the useful range of
In order to achieve sufficient resolution in any a single wavelength is a real threat. However, as many
observations made near, or even on the moon, a vast satellites are sampling simultaneously, the correlator
array of antennas would be required. Jester and Falcke can simply exclude data from satellites which exhibited
(3)
even predict numbers in the order of 104-108. too much drift.

Although those numbers are high, a lot of useful A SWARM SATELLITE

science could be performed with a thousand units, and Lately, a lot of missions involving a satellite swarm are
those numbers aren’t that improbable, given a sufficient envisaged. No clear definition of a spacecraft swarm
time span for development and deployment. This is a has been defined to date however, causing a lot of
luxury most scientific missions cannot afford however, confusion. The authors therefore attempt to clearly
an easier to achieve target number of 50 is therefore define a spacecraft swarm, in order to avoid confusion
considered (10) for the OLFAR mission, which still and any associated problems in designing one.
produces excellent science.
In order to do so, a swarm should be lined out against
PAYLOAD the background of other distributed systems in space,
OLFAR will consist of a swarm of 50 nano-satellites and it should be placed in its own niche.
orbiting Earth’s moon. They will form an autonomous
A Swarm as a Distributed Space System
sensor-network, capturing data at the earth-eclipse
phase of their orbits. This is to occur in a coordinated A satellite swarm consists of a large number of
manner, as the elements are instructed to try to remain physically identical elemental satellites in which
in a swarm with a baseline of about 100 km. interactions amongst the satellites lead to the emergence
of behaviour on the swarm level which cannot be traced
The target values for the receiver component of the back to the behaviour of an individual satellite. A
elements as given in Bentum et al. (10) is repeated in satellite autonomously stays within the area of the
Table 1. The orbital position wasn’t fixed at the time, swarm, keeping sufficient distance to the other
and it still isn’t. A lot of useful science would be lost by satellites. No hierarchical or otherwise global command
not moving to a lunar orbit, yet the best science can be structure is present to control their individual
obtained in an Earth-Moon L2 halo or Lissajous orbit. behaviour.
Data relay to earth is impaired by the moon however,
requiring separate relay satellites in lunar orbit. The main challenge in designing and controlling such a
system lies in the fact there’s no possibility for external
Table 1: The OLFAR preliminary specifications as (e.g. through a ground station) control on the position or
given in Bentum (10) the behaviour of each individual satellite. Commands
Frequency range 1-30 MHz are given to the swarm as a whole, and results are
Antennas Dipole or tripole produced by the swarm as a whole. The actions of each
Number of elements 50 individual element cannot be predicted and are never
Maximum baseline Between 60 and 100 km relayed to the ground station. The rules for the
Spectral resolution 1 kHz
behaviour of each element therefore have to be
Processing bandwidth 100 kHz

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designed in such a way to ensure robustness for both a  Fractioned spacecraft
successful operation of the element, as well as the
Fractioned spacecraft are a term coined by Brown and
swarm as a whole.
Eremenko (13), and consist of separate spacecraft busses,
A satellite swarm can be seen as different elemental each designed with a single subsystem function in
satellites cooperating; yet it can also be seen as a single mind. This would allow a much shorter development
large satellite with distributed sensors, each with their time, as each subsystem required by the mission could
own bus, allowing for the basic functions. It is this bus be developed at its own pace, and in fact, could even be
which allows for the emergent behaviour, of which the launched at its own pace, completing the mission bit by
source lies mostly in the software component of the on bit. This comes at a mass penalty however, in the sense
board computer, and the communication protocols used. that each subsystem will require its own power supply,
short-range communication system and perhaps even an
Distributed Space System Classification attitude or orbit control system. When one subsystem
breaks down however, it can easily be replaced by
Various satellite constellations, in effect forming another, at a much lower launch cost, due to the
distributed systems in space, have been devised. The relatively lower mass.
satellite swarm is no different, and should be treated as
such. However, in order to be able to qualify a ESA’s XEUS (14) space observatory would be one of the
distributed system as a spacecraft swarm, a clear first missions to benefit from using this configuration.
definition is in order. First, it is of importance to list the
various forms of distributed space systems.  Satellite swarms

 Formation flying spacecraft Satellite swarms are rather different systems when
compared to traditional satellite constellations. They
Formation flying spacecraft, consist of two or more most closely resemble fractioned spacecraft, in the
satellites flying in a closely and tightly controlled sense that all subsystems are distributed across the
formation, usually determined by ground station swarm, yet each element is an identical copy of the
operators. They fly in formation to increase either the other, and hence is capable of functioning by itself.
spatial or temporal coverage of a certain area of
interest, as is done by SSC’s PRISMA mission, or to The behaviour of each element can differ depending on
form an interferometer in case of NASA’s Terrestrial the specific task that is available in the swarm.
Planet Finder or ESA’s Darwin. Flying in such a tightly
controlled formation is a very intensive process, and The demand for redundancy has shifted from a
propellant is consumed at rapid rates. For swarm subsystem level to a satellite level, as the entire satellite
elements, the benefits do not outweigh the excessive is a redundant copy of the other swarm elements.
propellant consumption, as the issues with coverage are
simply solved by numbers. Swarm satellites are best considered as simple satellites
with a limited number of payloads, communicating with
 Satellite constellations other (identical) satellites, flying in similar orbits. They
form loosely coherent groups or clusters, based on
Satellite constellations are commonly used as a general
simple, opportunistic rules.
umbrella for all satellite missions using multiple
satellites, and in fact a spacecraft swarm would indeed This implies they do not fly in a closely controlled and
be characterisable as a satellite constellation. monitored formation - the swarm in fact controls the
relative position of its elements independently through
The term however can also be interpreted as missions primitive inter-satellite interactions, rather than through
covering the globe, at equal angles across the celestial
strict control of each element by ground station
sphere. They are in fact formation flying spacecraft,
operators.
distributed across trains of spacecraft in an array of
orbits spread over multiple orbital planes, covering as Examples of swarm missions are NASA’s ANTS
much of the globe as possible. Due to the geometry and mission concepts (15), or indeed the Dutch OLFAR
the long distances, their relative positioning accuracy is mission (16).
of very low importance, and no range measurements are
generally taken between the satellites.  Comparison
Examples are the various GNSS satellites circling the Table 2 lists a comparison between the various existing
globe, as well as the Iridium constellation (12). forms of distributed space systems. Several advantages
of a satellite swarm immediately become apparent, yet

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the downsides are visible as well. It must be stressed Moreover, the swarm elements apply their numbers to
swarms aren’t always applicable – certain missions underscore one of their primary strengths: They are not
require accurate positioning for example, which swarms designed for precision (formation) flight, but their
cannot offer. knowledge of their position and state is as exact as
possible. All location-related discrepancies are
Table 2: A comparison of the various distributed compensated for post-sampling through computation,
satellite systems which is a lot more efficient in terms of propellant
Formation Constellation Fractioned S/C consumption, while additionally allowing for more
flying S/C S/C Swarm detailed analysis of the data on-ground. Given their
Navigational Very high Moderate Moderate High knowledge of their location, a full (virtual)
accuracy
reconstruction of their environment could become
Orbital control Very high Moderate High Low
precision per possible.
element
Position control Very High Moderate High High Applicability of a Swarm
of the virtual
instrument Swarms have their own niche in mission designs. This
Redundancy Very low Low Moderate Very eliminates certain types of missions, and others will
high require a shift in design philosophy to allow for the use
Impact of the Loss of Reduced Loss of Reduced of a swarm.
loss of an mission functionality specific coverage/
element function resolutio
n Large, complex payloads, such as high resolution
Element High High Moderate Very low telescopes are unlikely to end up on a swarm element,
complexity and optical interferometers with a synthetic baseline,
System design High Low Moderate High such as NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder are unsuitable
complexity
Time-to-market Very long Long Short Short
for swarm missions, due to the required physical
Launch window Low Moderate High Very positioning accuracy. A swarm could be used to handle
flexibility high their data transfer and (pre-) processing however.
Maintainability Low Low Moderate High
Possibilities for Low Low Low Very When considering earth observing missions, swarms
extension high fail at delivering precisely timed observations – those
/expansion
are predominantly the domain of traditional
Autonomy Moderate None Low Very
high
constellations.

In general, it is best to use swarms for non-time critical

Definition missions – data will come in (in volume), yet at
When reflecting upon the different distributed space indeterminable points in time, due to the nature of the
systems, a definition for a spacecraft swarm can be protocols used. Some data will even be sent multiple
formed. times in a row, whilst others might never arrive at all.
This requires a shift in mission design philosophy for
It reads: “A spacecraft swarm is a globally controlled certain missions, shifting from absolute, single
cloud of primitive satellites”. measurements to post-processed data, scanned multiple
times, with some data overlap, whilst other data might
More specifically: only be scanned once. A swarm can detect rapid
transients, yet the reporting rate is rather
“A group of simple satellites, behaving in such way the indeterminable, and it can last a good while before the
collective achieves a pre-set goal, which a single transient is reported to a ground station, if no provisions
element in itself would not have been able to” have been made to account for such events.
They are in effect a distributed system. The swarm can
have a mother-ship, with a hive-like function, yet this
ship is not part of the swarm, as a swarm element
should never be unique. In a way, the ground-station
generally performs this function, as the workers return
the results of their foraging to it. Redundancy and
robustness are achieved primarily through the sheer
volume of elements.

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THE OLFAR SPACE SEGMENT
The OLFAR space segment will consist of a cloud of
50 autonomous nano-satellites. They will be self-
propelled, and the cloud will autonomously control
itself. Ground-station operators will mostly, except for
debug purposes, only control the satellites’ science
phases, by configuring the observation beam, and the
timing.

Since all elements have a full propulsion system on

board, and launches towards the moon are scarce, a
solution had to be found to allow the satellites to travel
towards the moon on their own power, and it has
presented itself in the form of TNO’s colloid thrusters
(12)
, which will allow insertion of the elements into any
random earth orbit. At that point, each element is to plot
its own trajectory towards the moon, and the GS
operators should merely verify the computation for a
go/no-go decision.

This way, the swarm can be completed at an arbitrary

Figure 1: The program phases of a single element in
rate, when launches are available. This implies
a counter-clockwise lunar orbit
however, not all elements are completely identical, as
newer models might include updated hardware. Certain elements however will drift out of range of the
Therefore, the protocols used are to be quite flexible, main swarm, and eventually will form a second science
and most of the software should be in-space upgradable, cluster, unless propellant is consumed to allow them to
which would allow increasing the number of active reposition themselves in the orbit.
elements in the long term, in case this would be
desirable. The program phases, in a 2 dimensional form, are
shown in Figure 2. They show when and where
Orbital Phases communication between the elements is required, and
stress the necessity of a high speed inter-satellite link.
Each element will follow a dynamic program, based on
the location in the orbit. The science phase is the
determining phase, and it is the design driver. Figure 1
shows the phases of an element, in the ideal case. Note
the position of the moon with respect to the Earth- and
sun-vector will change over time.

Leading element
Position Time & position Coordinated Data pre- Synchronise Synchronise
Wait Correlate Downlink
determination synchronisation sampling processing dataset dataset

Central element
Position Time & position Coordinated Data pre- Synchronise Synchronise
Wait Wait Wait Downlink
determination synchronisation sampling processing dataset dataset
Lagging element
Position Time & position Coordinated Data pre- Synchronise Synchronise
Wait Wait Downlink
determination synchronisation sampling processing dataset dataset

Figure 2: The program phases for three elements

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 well as an accurate sun-sensor to determine the orbit of
Radio Links
the satellite.
The data collection rate for an 8-element cluster is
given in Saks (11) as 2 Mbps per receiving antenna. This On Board Computer
is for the case of a 1 MHz signal bandwidth, at a 1 bit The OBC (On Board Computer) is the brain of the
sampling resolution. This implies the interlink of the satellite. It controls the interlinks, as well as the data
satellites would have to transfer at a rate of 2 Mbps, storage, and will therefore have to be able to process the
each time the dataset is synchronised. The correlator of
raw data throughput rates put forth by the array.
a 50-satellite array however would receive a data Moreover, it is in charge of applying the rules which
stream of 100 Mbps. determine the behaviour of the satellite in interactions
with the other swarm members. It is this behaviour
Correlation generates, according to Saks (11), a data
1 𝑀𝐻𝑧 1 𝑏𝑖𝑡 which allows for the emergent behaviour of the swarm.
stream of 2 × 50 × 50 × × = 4.77 𝑀𝑏𝑝𝑠 per
1 𝑘𝐻𝑧 1𝑠
second of observation. Note that for OLFAR the These rules are not expected to place a heavy burden on
effective bandwidth was defined as 100 kHz, rather the processor. Finding the proper rules however will
than 1 MHz, resulting in a data stream of 200 Kbps and require a tremendous research effort and it is therefore
a correlator output of 477 Kbps respectively. The exact one of the most challenging subsystems to design.
bandwidth hasn’t been defined yet however, nor the
sampling resolution. PROJECT STATUS
The OLFAR project is already partly funded and
Moreover, the science phase time span depends on the research and development has started both at Dutch
altitude of the orbit of the swarm, as well as the number academia and research institutes, supported by Dutch
of satellites in a useful science orbit. The worst case industry. A test of one of the subsystems for OLFAR,
scenario would be a low lunar orbit, with a full useful an LF radio-chip, has been designed and is planned to
science output cluster of 50 satellites. At an altitude of be tested on board the Delfi-n3Xt satellite, which is
1000 km, the eclipse duration has a maximum of about being built by the Delft University of Technology at the
2500 seconds, which would generate a data volume of time of writing.
1165 megabits for the correlator to process and store.
It is a 2x2 mm chip, using AMS 350 nm CMOS
Due to the inherent flexibility of the system, the likely technology. It has a frequency span of 30 kHz to 30
case will be a dynamic sample time, determined by the MHz, and an output bandwidth of 50 kHz.
element’s separation distance and orbital altitude at that
point in time. Therefore, the interlink speed is more of a Its noise floor is equal to the system noise, at -152 dB,
design driver, rather than an output, as it will determine with a noise bandwidth of 50 kHz.
the maximal processing ability of the array, as well as
the instantaneous one. Other critical components of the space segment have
been identified, and missions and projects are being
Currently, both the inter satellite link and the long- outlined focussing on their development.
range transmitter are expected to operate at frequencies
above S-band, in order to manage the required data ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
rates. An investigation is running as to whether the
This project would not have been possible without the
solar panel-substrate can be used to double as a phased
MISAT/MicroNed project which acted as a predecessor
patch antenna array.
and mission enabler.
Attitude and Orbit Control
The attitude control of an OLFAR swarm element is
relatively relaxed, as the pointing vector of the antennas
is not important to the science output. Its orbit
determination however is crucial to the accuracy of the
science results.

An alternative navigation system is being developed,

using radio-pulsars (13), which would be able to provide
both accurate navigation and accurate timing
information to the array. However, as a back-up
solution, a miniature star-tracker will be designed, as

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