CubeSats could carry everything from experiments to transmitters into space relatively cheaply

Experts say the big news in spacecraft building involves ultra-small CubeSats.

These petite but powerful satellites are spearheading a hands-on revolution around the world. And what fist-sized CubeSats bring to space could mimic innovations sparked by the personal computer here on Earth.

To look at them, you don't see much ...and that's a good thing. Its not a massive, expensive spacecraft that has been years in the making and loaded to its sprawling solar panels with super-electronics and other posh payload parts.

A standard CubeSat is a motherboard of invention. It is a 4-inch (10-centimeter) block of equipment that tips the scale at roughly 2 pounds (1 kilogram). A handful are already in space and with other launches planned for later this year.

Peep inside a CubeSat and you'll spot off-the-shelf circuitry in the familiar form of microprocessors and modem ports, and other microchip devices typically used in cell phones, digital cameras and hand-held Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation units.

CubeSats will make be easier and more cost effective to deploy into orbit.

Good things coming

A CubeSat can be built for under $25,000, although they typically come in at the $30,000 to $40,000 price range -- still a bargain. The "going-rate" per CubeSat launch is in the $40,000 range.

There's already a CubeSat Kit being offered that gives a builder a leg up on turning a space mission into reality -- and meeting a launch date "on time and under budget," says one product brochure.

Regarding what services CubeSats can perform, Twiggs said that he doesn't have the foggiest idea of what the "killer application" of the little satellites will prove to be. However, as for their utility, he's quick to respond.

"The utility to me is to educate the students. The electronics are starting to get better...the efficiency of solar cells is going up...and in a couple of years they're going to be very capable little satellites. I think some good things are coming," Twiggs said.

Freedom to fail

Because the industry is new, "we don't know how it has been done so we're less constrained by the established way to solving the problem," said Michael Swartwout, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. "We can now finally play to our strengths...our enthusiasm."

Universities have an inherent advantage, Swartwout contends, and that is the freedom to fail. In fact, he added, three of the six CubeSats placed in orbit in 2003 were either never contacted or failed very early.

"Experimental failure is a basic element of university life, and from the university's perspective, a failed spacecraft is not necessarily a failed mission," Swartwout said.

Swartwout explained that the tremendous reductions in the size and cost of electronics are making possible "disposable" probes that function for only weeks, but whose very low cost and short development cycle make their launch and operation affordable.

•	CubeSats could carry everything from experiments to transmitters into space relatively cheaply CNN.com International, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2004

	Story also ran in 3 others:  MSNBC, USA Today and Space.com