Nothing has filled me with more joy than the knowledge that NASA named two of its CubeSats “Wall-E” and “EVA”
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Nothing has filled me with more joy than the knowledge that NASA named two of its CubeSats “Wall-E” and “EVA”

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Nano! The one in a million first Moldovan satellite 🛰️
Astra's Rocket 3.3 set for first launch from Florida
As early as this weekend @Astra plans to launch its Rocket 3.3 small satellite launcher out of Florida to send CubeSats to space for @NASA_LSP.
Astra’s Rocket 3.3 is a small satellite launch vehicle. Its first operational mission is set to send CubeSats into low Earth orbit for NASA’s Venture Class Launch Services program. Credit: John Kraus / Astra Astra Space Inc. is set to launch its first operational rocket, which is also the first mission under NASA’s Venture Class Launch Services Demonstration 2 contract. (more…)
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Everyone is building CubeSats (even our crappy engineering school) because it's fashionable, and it's doing weird things to the rocket industry.
Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia.
The Impact of the Growing Smallsat Niche on the Rocket Industry and the Global Economy
New miniaturized propulsion systems can help expand the capabilities of nanosatellites!

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Meet Our Latest CubeSats
When the next Orbital ATK cargo mission to the International Space Station blasts off from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on May 20 at 5:04 a.m. EDT carrying science and supplies, the Cygnus spacecraft will also be carrying a few of our latest CubeSats.
The International Space Station is often used to deploy small satellites, a low-cost way to test technology and science techniques in space.
On board this time, for deployment later this summer, are...
The ‘Rabbit’ in the RainCube
As its name suggests, RainCube will use radar to measure rain and snowfall. CubeSats are measured in increments of 1U (A CubeSat unit, or 1U, is roughly equivalent to a 4-inch box, or 10x10x10 centimeters). The RainCube antenna has to be small enough to be crammed into a 1.5U container; the entire satellite is about as big as a cereal box.
"It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat," said Nacer Chahat, a specialist in antenna design at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Shrinking the size of the radar is a challenge for us. As space engineers, we usually have lots of volume, so building antennas packed into a small volume isn't something we're trained to do."
That small antenna will deploy in space, like an upside-down umbrella. To maintain its small size, the antenna relies on the high-frequency Ka-band wavelength – good for profiling rain and snow. Ka-band also allows for an exponential increase in sending data over long distances, making it the perfect tool for telecommunications.
Peering Into Clouds
TEMPEST-D will also study weather. Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems – Demonstration (TEMPEST-D) has satellite technology with the potential to measure cloud and precipitation processes on a global basis. These measurements help improve understanding of Earth’s water cycle and weather predictions, particularly conditions inside storms.
TEMPEST-D millimeter-wave observations have the ability to penetrate into clouds to where precipitation initiation occurs. By measuring the evolution of clouds from the moment of the onset of precipitation, a future TEMPEST constellation mission could improve weather forecasting and improve our understanding of cloud processes, essential to understanding climate change.
Cutting Through the Noise
CubeRRT, also the size of a cereal box, will space test a small component designed to detect and filter radio frequency interference (RFI). RFI is everywhere, from cellphones, radio and TV transmissions, satellite broadcasts and other sources. You probably recognize it as that annoying static when you can’t seem to get your favorite radio station to come in clearly because another station is nearby on the dial.
The same interference that causes radio static also affects the quality of data that instruments like microwave radiometers collect. As the number of RFI-causing devices increases globally, our satellite instruments – specifically, microwave radiometers that gather data on soil moisture, meteorology, climate and more – will be more challenged in collecting high-quality data.
That’s where CubeSat Radiometer Radio frequency interference Technology (CubeRRT) comes in. The small satellite will be carrying a new technology to detect and filter any RFI the satellite encounters in real-time from space. This will reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted back to Earth – increasing the quality of important weather and climate measurements.
Searching the Halo of the Milky Way
Did you know that we’re still looking for half of the normal matter that makes up the universe? Scientists have taken a census of all the stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies — and we’re coming up short, based on what we know about the early days of the cosmos.
That missing matter might be hiding in tendrils of hot gas between galaxies. Or it might be in the halos of hot gas around individual galaxies like our own Milky Way. But if it’s there, why haven’t we seen it? It could be that it’s so hot that it glows in a spectrum of X-rays we haven’t looked at before.
Image Credit: Blue Canyon Technologies
Enter HaloSat. Led by the University of Iowa, HaloSat will search the halo of the Milky Way for the emissions oxygen gives off at these very high temperatures. Most other X-ray satellites look at narrow patches of the sky and at individual sources. HaloSat will look at large swaths of the sky at a time, which will help us figure out the geometry of the halo — whether it surrounds the galaxy more like a fried egg or a sphere. Knowing the halo’s shape will in turn help us figure out the mass, which may help us discover if the universe’s missing matter is in galactic halos.
CubeSats for All
Small satellites benefit Earth and its people (us!) in multiple ways. From Earth imaging satellites that help meteorologists to predict storm strengths and direction, to satellites that focus on technology demonstrations to help determine what materials function best in a microgravity environment, the science enabled by CubeSats is diverse.
They are also a pathway to space science for students. Our CubeSat Launch initiative (CSLI) provides access to space for small satellites developed by our Centers and programs, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations. Since the program began, more than 50 educational CubeSats have flown. In 2016, students built the first CubeSat deployed into space by an elementary school.
Learn more about CubeSats HERE.
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NASA Begins Checkout of Dellingr Spacecraft Designed to Improve Robustness of CubeSat Platforms by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Via Flickr: NASA ground controllers have begun checking out and commissioning a shoebox-sized spacecraft that the agency purposely built to show that CubeSat platforms could be cost-effective, reliable, and capable of gathering highly robust science. The Dellingr spacecraft will begin science operations once ground controllers complete checkout, which began a few hours after the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer aboard the International Space Station released the CubeSat into its low-Earth orbit Nov. 20. This image shows the release of the Dellingr spacecraft, which NASA specifically developed to provide high-quality science data on a small platform. Image credit: Nanoracks/Larry Kepko Read more. NASA Media Usage Guidelines
A pair of CubeSats, with the Earth's limb in the background, moments after being ejected from a small satellite deployer outside of the International Space Station's Kibo laboratory module on Wednesday, May 16, 2017. The tiny shoebox-sized satellites will orbit Earth observing the Earth’s upper atmosphere and interstellar radiation left over from the Big Bang. Over a dozen CubeSats were ejected into Earth orbit this week outside the Kibo module to study Earth and space phenomena for the next one to two years. Image Credit: NASA CubeSats Time And Space