CubeSat in the context of "Low Earth orbit"

A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation (GPS), broadcasting, scientific research, and Earth observation. Additional military uses are reconnaissance, early warning, signals intelligence and, potentially, weapon delivery. Other satellites include the final rocket stages that place satellites in orbit and formerly useful satellites that later become defunct.

Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). Most satellites also have a method of communication to ground stations, called transponders. Many satellites use a standardized bus to save cost and work, the most popular of which are small CubeSats. Similar satellites can work together as groups, forming constellations. Because of the high launch cost to space, most satellites are designed to be as lightweight and robust as possible. Most communication satellites are radio relay stations in orbit and carry dozens of transponders, each with a bandwidth of tens of megahertz.

NCube (Norwegian CubeSat) was a series of two Norwegian satellites, made by students at several Norwegian universities and university colleges. Due to problems during launch (NCube-1) and deployment into orbit (NCube-2), neither of the satellites became operational.

Both satellites were built to the CubeSat picosatellite standard, which defined their mass and size (10 cm cube). This standard allows one or more cube satellites to be launched by 'piggybacking' with a larger satellite. In this way the smaller satellites get a cheap ride into orbit.

A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under 1,200 kg (2,600 lb). While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites can be built small to reduce the large economic cost of launch vehicles and the costs associated with construction. Miniature satellites, especially in large numbers, may be more useful than fewer, larger ones for some purposes – for example, gathering of scientific data and radio relay. Technical challenges in the construction of small satellites may include the lack of sufficient power storage or of room for a propulsion system.

Jordi Puig-Suari is an aerospace technology developer and retired professor. He is the co-inventor of the CubeSat standard together with Bob Twiggs, and the co-founder of Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.

Robert J. Twiggs (born November 27, 1935) is an American professor of Astronautics and Space Science at Morehead State University. He is responsible, along with Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnic State University, for co-inventing the CubeSat reference design for miniaturized satellites which became an Industry Standard for design and deployment of the satellites.

ESTCube-1 is the first Estonian satellite and first satellite in the world to attempt to use an electric solar wind sail (E-sail). It was launched on 7 May, 2013, aboard Vega VV02 carrier rocket and successfully deployed into the orbit. The CubeSat standard for nanosatellites was followed during the engineering of ESTCube-1, resulting in a 10×10×11.35 cm cube, with a volume of 1 liter and a mass of 1.048 kg.

The mission officially ended on 17 February, 2015. At that time, data from the satellite was used in 29 bachelor's and 19 master's dissertations, 5 doctoral theses, and 4 start-ups. The deployment of the E-sail tether was unsuccessful, and thus no measurements were taken of the E-sail or of the plasma braking deployment system. The last signal from ESTCube-1 was received on 19 May, 2015.

KickSat was a satellite dispenser for small-satellite (femtosatellite) project inaugurated in early October 2011, to launch many very small satellites from a 3U CubeSat. The satellites have been characterized as being the size of a large postage stamp.and also as "cracker size".The mission launch was originally scheduled for late 2013 and was launched April 18, 2014.

Kicksat reached its orbit and transmitted beacon signals that were received by radio amateurs. Telemetry data allowed the prediction of the orbit and the reentry on May 15, 2014, at about 01:30 UTC. Due to a non-redundant design, a timer reset while on-orbit and the femtosatellites were not deployed in time, and burned up inside the KickSat mothership when the undeployed satellite-deployment mechanism reentered Earth's atmosphere. It is one of several crowdfunded satellites launched during the 2010s.