OLFAR: Nano-satellites for science

Earth-based radio astronomy is currently limited to frequencies of 30 MHz and higher, due to the influence of the ionosphere and Earth-based man-made interference. In order to breach this barrier, a space-based radio-telescope is required. This radio telescope is quite an impressive device, as a baseline of 100 km is required in order to achieve sufficient resolution, hence the most viable option would be to distribute this system into separate antennas. These can be combined, into a single virtual instrument. OLFAR’s approach [1] to this problem is to use a swarm of self-managed, self-organising nano-satellites, which is rather revolutionary, as no swarms of satellites have ever been flown, even for large satellites. Moreover, nano-satellites have currently hardly ever been used for real scientific uses; they are generally applied as technology demonstrators, and feasibility-study objects.