Modern Small Satellites-Changing the Economics of Space

By M. Sweeting. Proceedings of the IEEE, 2018

330 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Earth orbiting satellites come in a wide range of shapes and sizes to meet a diverse variety of uses and applications. Large satellites with masses over 1000 kg support high-resolution remote sensing of the Earth, high bandwidth communications services, and world-class scientific studies but take lengthy developments and are costly to build and launch. The advent of commercially available, high-volume, and hence low-cost microelectronics has enabled a different approach through miniaturization. This results in physically far smaller satellites that dramatically reduce timescales and costs and that are able to provide operational and commercially viable services. This paper charts the evolution and rise of small satellites from being an early curiosity with limited utility through to the present where small satellites are a key element of modern space capabilities.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Computer Networks and Communications

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3e5848d9d3bf9bfc3dbb7b763bbf79c9e6d5c6e6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Aerospace Engineering

In Computer Networks and Communications

Citations in the corpus

CubeSat Communications: Recent Advances and Future Challenges (2019, background): “Reference [33] surveys the literature on evolution, constraints, policies, and applications of small satellites.”