MOTIVATION

I believe the era of nanosatellites is still to come. We are only in the beginning of the big future. Greatly more launches, novel technologies, big constellations and thrilling exploration missions all over the Solar System. Thanks to miniaturized subsystems and payloads we will be able to visit many times more moons and asteroids.



Being bound to fit into a (CubeSat) box empowers creativity and innovation. It is easy to switch to a larger (custom) platform and even cheaper in some cases, but advanced R&D will benefit in the long-term. Many missions that were tought to be impossible with CubeSats even five years ago are now being demonstrated or planned.

"Just because a spacecraft is small, it doesn’t make it easy. A highly constrained spacecraft can push the engineering, push the ingenuity of the team in a way that, in every way, is comparable to some of these big missions that we’re doing." - Thomas Zuburchen, NASA associate administrator

SOURCES

Updates every 2-3 months. Doing the best to keep track when information is accessible. Always attempting to find and link the original sources.

TERMS OF USE

You are welcome to use the figures. Please credit the author and source, e.g. "Erik Kulu, Nanosats Database, www.nanosats.eu". You are also welcome to change the graphic design to match style.