cubesats Archives

July 5, 2024July 5, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

CubeSat Propulsion Technologies are Taking Off

Two cubesats communicated and then maneuvered towards one another in a recent technology demonstration. Image Credit: NASA

CubeSats are becoming ever more popular, with around 2,400 total launched so far. However, the small size limits their options for fundamental space exploration technologies, including propulsion. They become even more critical when mission planners design missions that require them to travel to other planets or even asteroids. A team from Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi recently released a review of the different Cubesat propulsion technologies currently available – let’s look at their advantages and disadvantages.

December 14, 2023December 15, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

A Tiny Telescope is Revealing “Hot Jupiter” Secrets

CUTE spacecraft and an artist's impression of a hot Jupiter. (Credit: NASA/JPL, University of Colorado)

A recent study presented this week at the 2023 meeting of the American Geophysical Union discusses observations of “hot Jupiters” from the NASA-funded CubeSat mission known as the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE). Unlike most exoplanet-hunting telescopes, whose sizes are comparable to a small school bus, CUTE measures 36 centimeters (14 inches) in length, equivalent to the size of a cereal box. These findings come after members of the team, which consists of undergraduate and graduate students, published an overview paper about CUTE in The Astronomical Journal in January 2023 and results from CUTE observing WASP-189b in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in August 2023.

November 2, 2023November 2, 2023 by Evan Gough

ESA’s Hera Mission is Bringing Two Cubesats Along. They’ll Be Landing on Dimorphos

This illustration shows the ESA's Hera spacecraft and its two CubeSats at the binary asteroid Didymos. Image Credit: ESA

In about one year from now, the European Space Agency will launch its Hera mission. Its destination is the asteroid Didymos, and it’ll be the second human spacecraft to visit the 390-meter chunk of rock. NASA’s DART mission crashed a kinetic impactor into Didymos’ tiny moonlet Dimorphos as a test of planetary defence.

Hera will perform a follow-up investigation of the binary asteroid to measure the size and morphology of the impact crater on Dimorphos. To help it along, it’s taking two tiny CubeSats that will land on Dimorphos.

October 8, 2023October 8, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

A Flock of CubeSats Will Use Wings to Maneuver at the Edge of Space

CubeSats are taking on more and more responsibility for remote monitoring of the Earth. As they become more ubiquitous, they will also gain more varied propulsion systems. Or, in the case of a new set of monitoring CubeSats from INTA, Spain’s Institue of Aerospace Technology, no propulsion system at all.

September 19, 2023September 19, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Spacecraft Could be Equipped With Tiny Thrusters That Use Water for Propellant

A micro thruster developed at Imperial College is only 1 mm long. Credit: Imperial College/ESA

Engineers working with the European Space Agency have developed a new thruster design smaller than the tip of your finger. Despite its small size, this mini-thruster designed for CubeSats appears to be highly efficient without the use of toxic chemicals.

November 8, 2022November 6, 2022 by Scott Alan Johnston

The Smallest Radar Ever Sent to Space Will Probe the Interior of Dimorphos After its Impact From DART

Are miniature probes the future of deep space exploration?

October 5, 2022October 6, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

A Year After a Failed Launch, Firefly Reaches Orbit and Deploys Satellites

Alpha FLTA002 mission successfully reached orbit but not so successfully deployed customer payloads. It lifted off on October 1, 2022 at 12:01am PST from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Credit: Firefly Aerospace.

Edited on 10/6/22 to add new information from Seradata.

Commercial space company Firefly Aerospace successfully launched its Alpha rocket for the first time last weekend, reaching orbit and deploying three satellites. While the latest determination of the satellites’ orbit reveals they may have not been placed in the correct orbit, the company appears to consider the orbit high enough to be considered a success. But others might not agree.

This launch comes just over a year after the Alpha rocket’s first launch attempt exploded two and a half minutes after liftoff from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

July 23, 2022July 23, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

A Mission to Reach the Solar Gravitational Lens in 30 Years

NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts is famous for supporting outlandish ideas in the astronomy and space exploration fields. Since being re-established in 2011, the institute has supported a wide variety of projects as part of its three-phase program. However, so far, only three projects have gone on to receive Phase III funding. And one of those just released a white paper describing a mission to get a telescope that could effectively see biosignatures on nearby exoplanets by utilizing the gravitational lens of our own Sun.

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

Finally, a Practical use for Space-Based Power Beaming. Sending Power to Satellites in Shade

Power beaming is one of those technologies that can completely change the world. Almost unlimited power wherever it is needed, whenever it’s needed, is literally a technology straight out of science fiction. Researchers have been working on the technology for decades at this point, but there has been little commercial headway so far, so what is holding this revolutionary technology up? A “killer app” would certainly help move it along – and that is what a team from Space Power, a private company, and the University of Surrey think they have found in the form of powering other microsatellites.

December 9, 2021December 9, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Company Tests Iodine Thruster in Space for the First Time

Ion thrusters have played second fiddle to chemical rockets for most of the history of space exploration. Part of that is because of their inability to launch payloads into orbit. But in space, their high thrust-to-weight ratio has plenty of appeal. Other features have held the technology back, including the difficulty of working with the thruster’s fuel source – xenon. Now, a team of engineers and scientists from ThrustMe, a French start-up that focuses on developing advanced propulsions systems, have developed an ion thruster that works on an entirely new and much easier to use material – iodine.