GeoScout: Architecture for Piggyback Interplanetary CubeSats
Lorenzo OLIVIERI, Alessandro FRANCESCONI, Matteo MASSIRONI
Abstract. Deep-space exploration is rapidly evolving toward agile, distributed mission architectures that leverage miniaturized platforms to increase scientific return while reducing cost. GeoScout is a proposed 12-U CubeSat architecture designed to deploy as a piggyback payload on interplanetary motherships and perform short, very low-altitude flybys for high-resolution geological imaging. Building on heritage from pioneering interplanetary CubeSats and recent asteroid flyby demonstrators, GeoScout accepts higher mission risk in exchange for low cost and high scientific payoff. Key innovations include a battery-first operational mode for critical flyby phases, a compact cold-gas propulsion thrust system optimised for precision ΔV manoeuvres in deep space, and a mothership-relayed high-bandwidth short-range link that eliminates on-board high-gain radios. This paper introduces the architecture, subsystem choices, mission profile, and a comparative analysis with past small-sat demonstrations, highlighting the unique capability of GeoScout to acquire high-resolution surface observation data from very low-altitude encounters.
Keywords
CubeSat, Piggyback, Interplanetary, Exploration, Architecture
Published online 7/20/2026, 4 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Lorenzo OLIVIERI, Alessandro FRANCESCONI, Matteo MASSIRONI, GeoScout: Architecture for Piggyback Interplanetary CubeSats, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 69, pp 926-929, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904251-163
The article was published as article 163 of the book CEAS – AIDAA Conference 2025
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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