Towards low-cost Swedish planetary missions

As a continuation of the Swedish tradition of designing small and high-quality spacecrafts such as Freja, Astrid, Munin, and SMART-1, Swedish scientists and engineers have proposed aggressive but feasible missions as the next national-level target: (1) an interplanetary plasma module (or subsatellite) Saga, and (2) a technology mission Prisma. The Saga micro-satellite contains a separation mechanism, technologically-challenging communication package, and plasma payload with an estimated total mass of 37kg to make the mission possible with a piggy-back launch or by attaching to another planetary mission. The Prisma mission consists of a semi-coordinated dual micro- and nano-satellites flying together in Earth orbit with state-of-art instruments to test. Both projects aim to develop and test new key spacecraft technologies.