Mini satellites. Tiny but mighty! Just like me.
Who doesn't like miniature versions of things? I am really into CubeSats. These petite aluminum boxes can do a variety of tasks when launched into space. From communications to imaging to even finding a good place for a moon base. At a size of about two Rubik's cubes and capable of valuable research, what's not to love? I'd love to build and launch one of these myself one day. Helping to advance research would be incredible. If I built one, I would probably create one that would be used for earth imaging. The possibilities are endless!
On January 17, Virgin Orbit launched Demo-2 with 10 CubeSats built by university students and NASA. One of the satellites, CAPE-3 built by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, will allow grade school students access to the satellite via a smartphone app to perform their own experiment. How cool is that? My hope is that more universities bring this science to lower school students to spark their passion. I cannot wait to build my own CubeSat!
The SpaceX launch of Transporter 1 on January 24 was huge with the delivery of a record-setting 140+ small microsatellites and nanosatellites into a sun-synchronous orbit. I can only imagine all of the work and science being conducted by these tiny but mighty CubeSats.
The only downside I can see is that the CubeSat can only do one task per mission, but maybe that's just the point.
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