Smallsats

Students love their cubesats, except maybe when they lose contact with one in the first days after launch because the team hasn’t yet nailed down its orbital track. Cubesats are often reacquired, but not without frayed nerves and lost experiment time. Amanda Miller spoke to researchers who think they can keep cubesat operators locked onto their satellites from the start.

Europe and Japan are leading the way toward cleaning Earth orbit of debris; satellite operators around the world must be ready to dodge debris and each other. It’s a chaotic situation that, to some, feels like an abdication of the U.S. government’s traditional leadership role in matters of space at a time when it’s never been more needed. Debra Werner examines the arguments and a potential solution.

For decades, it seemed like the only way to deliver detailed pictures of Earth from space was to orbit large telescopes and point them back at us. Today, companies are upending this conventional wisdom. Debra Werner looks at how one company, BlackSky, aims to storm the commercial imagery market.

Constellations of microsatellites are starting to provide imagery, communications bandwidth and weather data to customers quickly and affordably. So what could possibly go wrong? Plenty, unless this sector gets its cybersecurity house in order. The good news, reports Debra Werner, is that some are starting to do just that.