Team Miles
Team Miles was a 6U CubeSat that was to demonstrate navigation in deep space using innovative plasma thrusters. It was also to test a software-defined radio operating in the S-band for communications from about 4 million kilometers from Earth. Team Miles was one of ten CubeSats launched with the Artemis 1 mission into a heliocentric orbit in cislunar space on the maiden flight of the Space Launch System, that took place on 16 November 2022. Team Miles was deployed but contact was not established with the spacecraft.
Overview
The spacecraft, a 6-Unit CubeSat — measuring 10 cm × 20 cm × 30 cm — was designed and is being developed by a non-profit group of fifteen citizen scientists and engineers based at Tampa, Florida. Since the Team Miles won the first place at CubeQuest Challenge for the selection process, Fluid and Reason, LLC stroke partnerships and became Miles Space, a commercial endeavor to further develop the technology and intellectual property that has come out of the design process.
Propulsion
Wesley Faler, who leads Fluid and Reason, LLC., is the inventor of the ion thruster to be used, which he calls ConstantQ Model H. It is a form of electric propulsion for spacecraft. The engine is a hybrid plasma and laser thruster that uses ionized iodine as propellant. The Model H system includes 4 thruster heads which are canted, allowing for both primary propulsion and attitude control without the use of moving parts. The goal within the CubeQuest Challenge is to travel 4 million kilometers, but the team will attempt to go as far as 96 million kilometers before the end of the mission.
Radio
The spacecraft will use the USRP B200mini, a software-defined radio operating in the S band for communications from about 4 million kilometers from Earth.