Next Generation Cubesats and Smallsats

Next Generation of CubeSats and SmallSats: Enabling Technologies, Missions, and Markets provides a comprehensive understanding of the small and medium sized satellite approach and its potentialities and limitations. The book analyzes promising applications (e.g., constellations and distributed systems, small science platforms that overachieve relative to their development time and cost) as paradigm-shifting solutions for space exploitation, with an analysis of market statistics and trends and a prediction of where the technologies, and consequently, the field is heading in the next decade. The book also provides a thorough analysis of CubeSat potentialities and applications, and addresses unique technical approaches and systems strategies.

1. Introduction2. The Concept and History of Small Satellites3. Comparing Platform paradigms: CubeSats vs. SmallSats4. Evolving capabilities and limitations of future CubeSat missions5. Legal Framework of Space Exploitation in the NewSpace Era6. Ethical Insights Toward a Moral Assessment of CubeSats Technologies7. Additive Manufacturing for CubeSat Structure Fabrication8. Mechanisms9. Introduction to CubeSat Power Systems10. Attitude Determination and Control11. Electro-Optical-based relative navigation12. Control Architectures and Algorithms13. Thermal Control Subsystem14. Radio Frequency Telecommunication Systems for CubeSats and SmallSats15. Optical Communication16. Command and Data Handling Systems17. Innovative and low-cost launch systems18. Chemical and Cold Gas Propulsion Systems19. Dual-mode propulsion systems for SmallSats20. Electric propulsion systems21. Propellant-less systems22. Close Proximity Operations, Formation Flying, and On-Orbit Servicing23. Overview of the New Space CubeSat market24. Spectroscopy on CubeSats and SmallSats25. Microbial biology on CubeSats26. The STARS series of nanosatellite missions27. The UVSQ-SAT mission28. Future perspectives