What are Nanosatellites?

Nanosatellites are satellites that weigh between one and ten kilograms, and usually are between one and ten litres (10x10x10 cm^3) in volume.

Nanosatellites are an emerging market and are "breaking the glass ceiling" of satellite design, development and launch. In conventional satellites the design is based on heritage from government projects, where cost and size are only a secondary consideration while reliability and performance play a much more important role. This approach leads to big satellites, with an on-board redundancy using components that were tailored to withstand space environment.

Nanosatellites are paving a totally different path while changing the ruling paradigm. The basic concept is that satellite failures are merely a manageable risk and not a disaster. By creating cheap satellites that are based on COTS (Commercial-Of-The-Shelf) components and have a low mass and volume, it is possible to build redundancy between satellites. If a satellite fails we simply launch another at a fraction of the cost of a conventional satellite.

This approach enables performing new tasks that were not possible under the previous paradigm. Nanosatellites are used as test-beds for new technology. They are staring to be used as transponders for amateur satellite community, and educate many space enthusiastic youngsters. We can safely say that nanosatellites are the true high-tech equivalent of the satellite industry.

This break through was enabled by the vision and hard work of people such as Professor Bob Twigs (Stanford) and Sir Martin Sweeting (SSTL).