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Today, space is experiencing a revolution: from large space agencies, multimillion dollar budgets, and big satellite missions to spin-off companies, moderate budgets, and fleets of small satellites. Some have called this the “democratization” of space, in the sense that it is now more accessible than it was just a few years ago. To a large extent, this revolution has been fostered on one side by the standardization of the platforms’ mechanical interfaces, and on the other side by the technology developments coming from mobile communications. Standard platform’s mechanical interfaces have led to standard orbital deployers, and new launching capabilities. The technology developed for cell phones has brought more computing resources, with less power consumption and volume.
Small satellites are used as pure technology demonstrators, for targeted scientific missions, mostly Earth Observation, some for Astronomy, and they are starting to enter in the field of communications, as huge satellite constellations are now becoming more possible.
In this lecture, the most widely used nano/microsats form factors, and its main applications will be presented. Then, the main Scientific Earth Observation and Astronomy missions suitable to be boarded in SmallSats will be discussed, also in the context of the rising Constellations of SmallSats for Communication. Finally, the nanosat program at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) will be introduced, and the results of the FSSCAT mission will be presented.
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