Constellation of CanSats to explore Van Allen Belts

Giant donut-shaped swaths of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles surround the Earth. Ever since their discovery in 1958, Van Belts have became a bottleneck for Medium or High Earth Orbit satellites or deep space missions. Our current technology is ever more susceptible to these accelerated particles because even a single hit from a particle can upset our ever smaller instruments and electronics. As technology advances, it`s actually becoming even more pressing to understand and predict our space environment. This paper presents a sustainable approach to collect data from the Van Allen belts, using constellation of CanSats which would have high high end electronics to collect the radiative data from the belts and transmit it to the Earth. The system level architecture developed, allows redundancy in terms of functionality of the satellites, to ensure data acquisition even when one type of instrument would have failed. The mission architecture proposed through the paper has been designed to maximize the observable data from the belts. Tables will also be given to depict the amount of time that will pass at each mode of launch and more importantly, some idea on the cost in terms of energy, as well as money, will be discussed within today`s context. Even though the possibility of such a mission is probably non-existent for this decade, it is essential to do these exercises so that mankind`s understanding of the Van Allen Belts could be increased. In addition, this paper hopes to underline few ground work required in order to explore more of the Van Allen Belts.