CUBESPEC: Low-cost space-based astronomical spectroscopy

Abstract

CubeSats are routinely used for low-cost photometry from space. Space-borne spectroscopy, however, is still the exclusive domain of much larger platforms. Key astrophysical questions in e.g. stellar physics and exoplanet research require uninterrupted spectral monitoring from space over weeks or months. Such monitoring of individual sources is unfortunately not affordable with these large platforms. With CUBESPEC we plan to offer the astronomical community a low-cost CubeSat solution for near-UV/optical/near-IR spectroscopy that enables this type of observations. CUBESPEC is a generic spectrograph that can be configured with minimal hardware changes to deliver both low resolution (R=100) with very large spectral coverage (200-1000 nm), as well as high resolution (R=30 000) over a selected wavelength range. It is built around an off-axis Cassegrain telescope and a slit spectrograph with configurable dispersion elements. CUBESPEC will use a compact attitude determination and control system for coarse pointing of the entire spacecraft, supplemented with a fine-guidance system using a fast steering mirror to center the source on the spectrograph slit and to cancel out satellite jitter. An extremely compact optical design allows us to house this instrument in a 6U CubeSat with a volume of only 10 x 20 x 30 cm(3), while preserving a maximized entrance pupil of ca. 9 x 19 cm(2). In this contribution, we give an overview of the CUBESPEC project, discuss its most relevant science cases, and present the design of the instrument.