64 For many years, space companies have been developing novel uncrewed vehicle concepts for exploring and researching the Solar System. They include new types of rovers for trekking across the Moon and Mars, drilling machines for boring through the icy crusts of the Europa and Enceladus moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and UUVs for diving through those boreholes to see if an alien ocean truly lies beneath. As these operating concepts evolve into working vehicles, a new industry of small satellites and the subsystems and launcher rockets supporting them has sprung up, paving the way for new missions aimed at furthering humanity’s understanding of space and our planetary neighbours. Many of these are ‘CubeSats’, a concept developed and standardised by California Polytechnic State University and Stanford University as a ‘1U’ size, measuring 10 x 10 x 10 cm. However, 1U can also extend to larger sizes, including 1.5, 2, 3, 6 and 12U, and given the costeffective platform they provide for new technology demonstrations, scientific experiments and so on, they have become an industry unto themselves. And although they might cross into the territory of CubeSats, also being developed are a variety of ‘SmallSats’, which are defined as spacecraft with a mass of less than 180 kg. Within this are minisatellites that range from 100 to 180 kg, microsatellites weighing 10-100 kg, nanosatellites weighing 1-10 kg, picosatellites at 0.01-1 kg and femtosatellites from 0.001-0.01 kg. With such a variety of spacecraft sizes, masses and therefore planned missions, some imminent and ongoing projects in uncrewed space exploration serve to illustrate the opportunities this new space industry offers. Small satellites are proving so versatile that they have become an industry in their own right. Rory Jackson reports About the size of it October/November 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology A wide range of CubeSats and SmallSats are used across presentday uncrewed space missions (Courtesy of NASA & JPL-CalTech)
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