Built quickly from cheap, off-the-shelf components and small enough to hitch an affordable ride to orbit on the back of bigger missions, these devices and the young, agile “New Space’’ companies behind them, taught the old-school space industry a few lessons.
New Space is coming of age and the companies behind the small satellite revolution must live up to expectations less favourable than their trademark experimental ethos. The lowest cost and shortest time to orbit may no longer be the technology’s biggest drawcard as users want maximum return on investment and require granted reliability.
The firms behind the disruptive tech, however, have grown up together with their market share and are tapping into emerging innovation looking to unleash many new applications in the coming years.
The evolution of SmallSat satellites started small. The first US satellite, Explorer 1was launched in 1958 and weighed only 13 kg. The technology that gave the world a whole new perspective on our planet expanded quickly, enabled by the increasing lifting powers of rockets. Soon complex satellites the size of a school bus took over, observing the planet from above, broadcasting TV signals across continents and sensing the environment around them.
It was only in the mid-1980s that researchers renewed their interest in smaller satellites with masses of tens to a couple of hundred kilograms. The true SmallSat revolution, however, began in 1999 with the development of CubeSats.
Based on standardised satellite units of 10 by 10 by 10 cm in size, CubeSats opened space to anyone with enough technical skill to assemble and operate them. University teams and radio amateurs worldwide began launching their own experimental spacecraft. By 2014, San Francisco-based Planet Labs launched its first commercial constellation of 28 three-unit (3U) Earth-observing CubeSats called Doves. More than 120 Doves are in orbit today, capturing an image of each place on Earth more than once a day.
Other companies followed. CubeSats have made it to orbit around Mars and the Moon and, in 2022, observed the impact of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) into the asteroid Didymos in real time.
Larger small satellite platforms, up to 500 kg in mass, have also grown in popularity. In fact, these larger small satellites today dominate space around Earth thanks to SpaceX’s constellation of Starlink internet satellites. Consulting firm Novaspace predicts that over 26 000 small satellites, including minisatellites of 100-500 kg in mass, microsatellites of 10-100 kg and nanosatellites as light as 1-10 kg will be launched in the next decade.
Although the SmallSat revolution is already behind us, new technologies are emerging that promise to supercharge the sector in the coming years. Read on in the October edition of EngineerIT
