• Question: what is the cubesat and how do you use it?

    Asked by ellieexo to Adam, Alexander, Aron, Jess, Neil on 14 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Neil Bowles

      Neil Bowles answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      A cubesat is a small satellite in the shape of a cube. They come in standard sizes so can be launched whenever there is some spare space on a rocket. Since they are a standard size, you can also buy standard components for them, e.g. battery, radio transmitter, mini-thrusters so its a bit like building a satellite from a kit. They are great as a low cost way of teasing out ideas in space. For example, the cubesat we have helped with and is being led by a colleague in America, is designed to measure the amount of micrometeorites and small space debris in low Earth orbit.

      Here are some examples of cubesats made by a company in the US being launched from the International Space Station: http://www.nasa.gov/content/set-of-nanoracks-cubesats-deployed-from-space-station/

    • Photo: Alexander Finch

      Alexander Finch answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      Neil has given a good answer! I have worked on a few CubeSats myself. They are fun because they are much easier and cheaper to make than a normal satellite. They’re pretty cool since they’re so small you can hold them in your hand 🙂

      As Neil said, they are used both for teaching, to show students how to build satellites, and for some scientific missions where you want to do an experiment in space or test out some new technology!

    • Photo: Aron Kisdi

      Aron Kisdi answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      In addition to the answers above you can also make cubesats bigger by adding multiple cubes. For example a popular size is 3U which is 3 cubesat cubes in a row. Such a cubesat is large enough to put a small telescope in it and observe our planet. There are many interesting projects such as Planetlabs, which actually can use CubeSats to do scientific research.

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