SpinSat: A Novel Variable-Gravity-and-Radiation-Exposure Platform for Deep-Space Science: Payload Development and Science Opportunities

Measuring the effects on biological and physical systems of the deep-space-radiation and reduced-gravity environments relevant to the Moon, Mars, and interplanetary space travel is challenging and, particularly for living biological systems, has scarcely been attempted. Resultant knowledge gaps pose risks to life support, human health and performance, and many operations critical to space and planetary exploration. By providing low-cost, reliable, frequent access to beyond-low-Earth-orbit space environments, the SpinSat platform will bridge such gaps. A disk-shaped rotating small spacecraft that provides simultaneous artificial gravity, exposure to tailored space radiation, and a benign thermal environment, SpinSat will accommodate at least 48U of CubeSat form-factor payloads per mission, providing power, data handling, and communications. It is orbit-agnostic, enabling access to a variety of radiation environments (Van Allen belts, deep space, cis-lunar), and can be equipped with shielding to mimic planetary radiation environments, for experiment durations from days to many months. SpinSat prioritizes late loading for biological payloads, suiting it to host everything from human tissues and organoids to microorganisms, plants, chemical reactions, physics experiments, materials processing, and engineering components and subsystems.
After summarizing the platform, we will offer exemplary experiment concepts suitable for SpinSat, and discuss how various aspects of experimental designs may interact with, and be accommodated by, the platform. The range of diverse applications envisioned to be implemented as CubeSat form-factor payloads includes fundamental radiation biology such as DNA damage and repair; cancer biology and countermeasure development; space agriculture; bioproduction of nutrients and pharmaceuticals; biology-based life-support and waste-management systems; understanding regolith-transfer dynamics in low gravity; multigenerational microbial evolution; prebiotic chemistry and panspermia. We will further highlight ideas for SpinSat-compatible experimental hardware, existing and in development, and experiment-relevant details on SpinSat capabilities including artificial gravity, customized radiation environments, data, and power. We aim to inspire the design and development of novel experiments for SpinSat, many of which might exist or be planned as current or future CubeSat payloads. We also seek community input to help guide the evolving design of this platform and the payloads it will accommodate.