The small satellite that is paying big dividends

Think of the International Space Station and most likely imagine an orbiting laboratory, where scientists observe how plants, materials and humans react to microgravity conditions. But over the past decade, the station has also played a very different role: that of a business incubator. And this is one of its flagship products: the CubeSat.

The CubeSat is one of the many types of satellites now found in space. It is one of the smallest; a “unit” is a compact cube measuring 10 x 10 x 10 cm and is commonly referred to as 1U. And it can be distributed for a fraction of what its bigger cousins ​​cost.

The first small satellites launched from the station were literally launched into space by Russian cosmonauts! In 2012, the crew members began using the airlock in the Japanese Kibo module to deploy up to 6U of CubeSats per airlock cycle. And not long after, American firm Nanoracks built and started using an even more robust deployer on the station, capable of launching up to 48U per cycle. This changed everything.

Mike Read is the manager of the space station business and economic development at Johnson Space Center. He notes how one of Nanoracks’ first customers, Planet, took advantage of the new launch capabilities aboard the space station:

“Planet wanted to take high-resolution photos of the Earth. While you can take photos from the space station, your coverage is limited by the station’s orbit. With multiple CubeSats, however, you can position them to cover almost any point on Earth.”

In a relatively short time, Planet deployed several generations of CubeSats from the space station, demonstrating the viability of their technology approach and business model. With these successes, Planet quickly expanded to an operational fleet of more than 150 satellites deployed using commercial launch providers. This fleet gives them the ability to view the entire continental mass of the Earth every day. Planet’s images are now in high demand by companies and governments using this big data in the agriculture, forestry and land use, mapping and disaster response sectors. In a decade the company has grown from a true start-up to nearly 500 employees.

Several companies are now building small launch vehicles specifically to deploy CubeSat and other small satellites in low Earth orbit, for use in various ways by businesses, students and nonprofits. CubeSats are used to provide Internet services to even the most remote regions of the planet. They are helping to build better weather and climate models to improve the weather forecast. They enable text messaging for your phone, anywhere in the world, even without a cellular signal.

The CubeSats are also leaving the planet. The first and second interplanetary CubeSats accompanied NASA’s Insight Lander on its recent mission to Mars, relaying data to the spacecraft as it entered the planet’s atmosphere. Some CubeSat missions will act as a pathfinder to help map the way to the Artemis missions to the Moon, and 13 CubeSats will be launched in the first mission, Artemis I.

Read concludes with this observation: “Today, more and more, a single large and expensive satellite is being replaced by one of the newest members of the satellite portfolio: a flock of small, less expensive but very powerful CubeSats. Access to accessible space. expanded the station’s capabilities in a way that, frankly, had never been anticipated. However, such access has allowed CubeSats to become an enduring commercial success, contributing significantly to the growing space market. ”