Quote:
Originally Posted by Lamplighter
TW, here's one description I found...
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A year ago,
a new Japanese satellite called FitSat was launched by hand from the ISS. It was one of the first Cube Sats.
This new satellite technology (10 by 10 by 10 centimeter cubes) permits students to launch space experiments. Launch costs are as low as $1000 or $2000 per cube. However all costs might be $30,000. Meaning cake sales can now finance space science. Telemetry and radio hardware is often based in consumer electronics; some Audrino based.
One recent UK bird was STRaND-1 using a standard consumer smartphone (Google Nexus One). Using Android apps to perform experiments.
Atlas payload was modified to deploy a cluster of CubeSats for anyone with a reasonable experiment and willing to pay for the launch. More interesting to the DoD are tiny satellites that cannot be tracked like the current array of larger DoD satellites. Lacrosse and other military birds can be observed and tracked even with a naked eye.
These CubeSats are simply using what would otherwise be wasted energy by the launch vehicle.