A 3U Cubesat or 24 PocketQubes?

May 14 2014

We have been throwing around quite an interesting idea within the PocketQube Shop team which in our opinion has a huge opportunity to disrupt small satellites and primarily super low-cost constellations. Essentially the idea is to utilise a CSD deployer, commonly used to deploy 3U cubesats on a tabs systems (rather than rails) and carry 24x1p PocketQubes or 12x2p PocketQubes.

Why do this?

Super low-cost constellations rather than one large in situ spacecraft. The advantages of constellations are that you can have more than one point for collecting data (such as images) and instead have multiple points. When in position, you could have near blanket coverage of the Earth for your new constellation. This has many potential science or even tech demo applications.

Spread the love!

The cool thing about something like this is that a national government that has say very little heritage in space and a very small budget could theoretically get a lot of participation out from such a project. You could have up to 24 Universities or High Schools, each participating in the learning experience and creating a national multiplier effect.  If each University/School had 5 teachers involved and 20 students per satellite, that is 600 people directly involved in designing building and testing the Spacecraft.

Launch one CSD per year and now you are talking about thousands of people taking part in what could be one of the most inspirational education projects ever. What will these kids build next? How about an number of satellite startups which could catapult a nation from a Space backwater to world leader.

Sound like a fun project to get going? Let us know: contact@pocketqubeshop.com