VISORS Spacecraft

Study the regions in the sun’s corona where energy is released. Flying in formation 40 meters apart as a distributed solar telescope

Study the regions in the sun’s corona where energy is released.

The VIrtual Super-resolution Optics with Reconfigurable Swarms (VISORS) mission will reveal, for the first time, individual energy-release sites in the solar corona to test theories of coronal heating. 

VISORS will address this major outstanding science question by demonstrating a novel and scalable imaging technology with unprecedented resolution using diffractive optics, inter-satellite crosslinks, and CubeSat precision formation flying. WSU will be working closely with a team of researchers from different universities across US to achieve high data-rate directional intersatellite cross-links using Ka-band phased-arrays for next-generation cube-sat arrays.

Blue Canyon Technologies is providing key components in a program that will, for the first time, reveal individual energy-release sites in the solar corona to test theories of coronal heating. Enable the VISORS program to help scientists understand the sun’s plasma physics and refine models for nanoflares and corona composition. Nanoflares are frequent explosions on the surface of the sun.

If all goes as planned the two VISORS cubesats will travel in 2023 to low Earth orbit. Once there, they will fly 40 meters apart and create a distributed telescope. The lead spacecraft will be equipped with optical elements and the trailing spacecraft will contain the detector.

• PLATFORM - Blue Canyon