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There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions expected inthe Main Belt. They are diverse in their physical properties and compositions.They are also time capsules of the early Solar System making them valuable forplanetary science, and are strategic for resource mining, planetarydefense/security and as interplanetary depots. But we lack direct knowledge ofthe geophysical behavior of an asteroid surface under milligravity conditions,and therefore landing on an asteroid and manipulating its surface materialremains a daunting challenge.  Towards this goal we are putting forth plans for a 12U CubeSat that will bein Low Earth Orbit and that will operate as a spinning centrifuge on-orbit. Inthis paper, we will present an overview of the systems engineering andinstrumentation design on the spacecraft. Parts of this 12U CubeSat willcontain a laboratory that will recreate asteroid surface conditions bycontaining crushed meteorite. The laboratory will spin at 1 to 2 RPM during theprimary mission to simulate surface conditions of asteroids 2 km and smaller,followed by an extended mission where the spacecraft will spin at even higherRPM. The result is a bed of realistic regolith, the environment that landersand diggers and maybe astronauts will interact with. The CubeSat is configuredwith cameras, lasers, actuators and small mechanical instruments to bothobserve and manipulate the regolith at low simulated gravity conditions. Aseries of experiments will measure the general behavior, internal friction,adhesion, dilatancy, coefficients of restitution and other parameters that canfeed into asteroid surface dynamics simulations. Effective gravity can bevaried, and external mechanical forces can be applied.

An On-Orbit CubeSat Centrifuge for Asteroid Science and Exploration