A few days ago, on the International Space Station the crew completed the launch of 33 nanosatellites of the CubeSat type. Of this group, 28 were called Doves and formed a constellation called “Flock 1” built by Planet Labs. This is the largest nanosatellites launch operation ever carried out, an event that could revolutionize the industry of scientific satellites.

The 33 nanosatellites arrived at the International Space Station in January, on the Cygnus spacecraft. They’re part of the NanoRacks Smallsat Deployment Program, a commercial collaboration between NASA, JAXA, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space and NanoRacks to use the Station as a launching pad for nanosatellites at relatively low cost.

NanoRacks built system to deploy nanosatellites from the International Space Station to be a leader in a quickly growing market. The CubeSats, nanosatellites typically build with commercial off-the-shelf electronic components, are becoming more and more popular thanks to their reduced cost. In some cases, they’re built around a standard smartphone. The consequence is that many universities have begun to set up scientific research through the use of CubeSats.

Building a CubeSat is relatively easy and cheap, sending it into space is more complicated and can still be very expensive. The launches of rockets that deploy satellites are booked very far in advance and even the inclusion of CubeSats, very small and light-weight, as a secondary cargo is expensive. The solution proposed by NanoRacks is to use the International Space Station as a launching pad for nanosatellites.

Including nanosatellites in the cargo of a spaceship that also carries other very diverse types of cargo to the International Space Station is much easier that being the secondary load on a rocket launched to deploy one or more satellites into orbit. That’s because on a cargo spacecraft it’s sufficient that there’s still room enough while in the case of a satellite launch the CubeSats must be placed in the correct orbit during the same flight, an operation that requires careful and precise planning.

On the International Space Station, the 33 nanosatellites arrived in January were launched using special equipment in about a month. Of those, the 28 Doves form the Flock 1 constellation. The standard CubeSats are actually cubic with sides of 10 cm (4″), the Doves are larger and have a parallelepiped shape of 30 by 10 by 10 centimeters (12 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches).

The purpose of the Flock 1 constellation is to take pictures of the Earth to monitor it. It’s a mission that can be useful for example to control deforestation or possible natural disasters. It’s therefore similar to that of Landsat satellites. The last of them was put into orbit a little over a year ago and it cost nearly a billion dollars. The Flock 1 constellation cost a small fraction of that figure.

Mind it, the Landsat 8 has very sophisticated instruments and could remain in orbit for many years. The Dove nanosatellites have limited instruments and they’re estimated to manage to remain in orbit for a couple of years, not having thrusters that allow them to perform adjustment maneuvers.

There’s a project tu build of a space telescope based on nanosatellites able to open up in space. It would also be possible to create arrays from them, so that they can put their capabilities together to reach those of the Hubble Space Telescope. Again, the costs would be a small fraction of Hubble’s, although they’d rise to millions of dollars, with the same limits.

The technologies underlying nanosatellites are becoming more and more interesting, also thanks to the evolution of small electronic boards such as Arduino and of smartphones. They’re not suitable for all purposes but in many cases may allow to perform scientific research at relatively low cost, especially using the International Space Station as their launch pad.

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