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ecently, a variety of solar sail spacecrafts using thin large membranes have been developed in US, Europe and Japan. In Japan, centrifugally deployed solar sails have been mainly investigated 1 . A solar power sail demonstration spacecraft “IKAROS” was developed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and was launched on May 21th, 2010 by H-IIA launch vehicle. 2,3 Figure 1 shows an overview of “IKAROS” in space. The square solar sail with 20 meters in diagonal and 7.5 micrometers in thickness was successfully deployed by centrifugal force using no extendable booms. The sail consists of four trapezoidal petals which were folded up into strips and rolled up around the spacecraft in stowed configuration. The deployment of the membrane consists of two stages. In the first stage, the strips are quasistatically reeled out. In the second stage, the strips are dynamically unfurled. Since on-ground dynamic deployment experiments of the large membrane are impossible, small-scale experiments and numerical simulations are necessary to predict the deployment dynamics. In this paper, a deployment experiment of a smallscale square membrane similar to “IKAROS” is conducted in a vacuum chamber and corresponding numerical simulations are performed by employing a spring-mass system model. The deployment behavior is discussed and the results of the experiment and simulations are compared to examine the validity of the simulations.

Cute-1.7+APD II is the third pico-satellite developed by students at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. One of the primary goals of the mission is to validate the use of avalanche photodiodes (APDs) as a radiation detector for the first time in a space experiment. The satellite was successfully launched by an ISRO PSLV-C9 rocket in Apr 2008 and has since been in operation for more than 20 months. Cute-1.7+APD II carries two reversetype APDs to monitor the distribution of low energy particles down to 9.2 keV trapped in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO), including South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) as well as aurora bands. We present the design parameters and various preflight tests of the APDs prior to launch, particularly, the high counting response and active gain control system for the Cute-1.7+APD II mission. Examples of electron/proton distribution, obtained in continuous 12-hour observations, will be presented to demonstrate the initial flight performance of the APDs in orbit.

[1] The Cute-1.7+APD II, 10 × 15 × 20 cm3 in size and 5 kg in mass, is the third picosatellite developed by students at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. One of the primary goals of the Cute-1.7+APD II mission is to validate the use of avalanche photodiodes (APDs) as a radiation detector for the first time in a space experiment. While the mission itself is immature compared to the forefront satellites of space plasma physics, use of APDs offers various possibilities regarding a brand-new electron energy analyzer for medium-energy electrons and ions (1–100 keV), as well as a high-performance light sensor for the future X-ray astronomy missions. The satellite was successfully launched by ISRO PSLV-C9 rocket on 28 April 2008 and has since been in operation for more than a year. The Cute-1.7+APD II carries two reverse-type APDs to monitor the distribution of low-energy particles (mainly electrons and protons) down to 9.2 keV trapped in a low Earth orbit (LEO), including the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) as well as aurora bands. We present the design parameters and various preflight tests of the APDs prior to launch, particularly, the high counting response and active gain control system for the Cute-1.7+APD II mission. Examples of electron/proton distribution, obtained in continuous 12 h observations, will be presented to demonstrate the initial flight performance of the APDs in orbit.

The Cute-1.7 was launched successfully in February 2006 as a piggyback satellite of the Astro-F mission. The Cute-1.7 dimensions are 10 × 10 × 20 cm 3 box with a total mass of 3.6 kg. It is the second pico-satellite to have been developed completely by students of the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech.) after the successful launch of the CUTE-I in June 2003. The goals of the Cute-1.7 mission are two-fold: (1) to validate high-performance, commercially available products for the first time in space. We particularly use personal digital assistants (PDAs) as a main computer in orbit (2) to demonstrate new potential uses for small satellites in various space studies, as proposed by the “satellite-core” concept. For the Cute-1.7 mission, we will carry avalanche photo diodes (APDs) as a high-count particle monitor in low-Earth orbit. Here we present details of various ground tests and pre-flight performance of the Cute-1.7 immediately before the launch. Results of the Cute-1.7 mission will provide quick feedback for space applications of APDs in Japan's future X-ray astronomy mission NeXT.