A Guide to CubeSat Mission and Bus Design (opens in new tab)

(pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu)

66 pointso4c1mo ago5 comments

5 comments

I've launched Cubesat missions commercially, and wasn't aware of this text (unclear when it was published). Many of the Space Mission txts are designed around larger (classical) satellite buses and aren't written for "how do you get a payload / mission to LEO for ~$1M" The book is spot on that F' is where it's at for the future of Small Satellites OBFS, the flight computer section is also pretty remarkably helpful - as in this is very practical "how you get it done and here is the history" versus pie in the sky theory. And per other comments, yes, it is rather US centric. Here is the reality, if you are putting a cibesat in orbit, 95% odds your best path is a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rideshare, which means you will be operating with a US FCC Launch license and coordinating with the FCC equivalent in your own country where you which to downlink to. That is the one area the book doesn't cover, Space law. You can get burned easily on "Space lawyers," charging ~$1500/hr to prepare an FCC license, helping you with ITAR (yes many components on a satellite are "arms" technology). If you get to the right person, there are a few small legal service shops in the US that will help you submit your launch license paperwork for a reaosnable fee. And lastly, integration and deployer. Believe it or not, there are foreign nation states (not the US) operating these deployer services that are adjacent to inteligence services that will do everything from spy on you to sabotage your mission if they don't like it (I've had it happen). All in, launching a small satellite is an amazing endeavor, and getting it to orbit and getting first downlink can be a very real challenge. It's an amazing time we live in that we can do such things

tagami28d ago

For those interested in CubeSats: NASA Small Spacecraft State of the Art Report (2024) https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/soa-2024.pdf...

jhk48200128d ago

Any article/books for disk-sat?

seism29d ago

CubeSats are being launched around the world. While a compelling effort, this book is rather US-centric, and will be incomplete without some wider research.

notahacker29d ago

In fairness, the CubeSat standard was invented in the US, the physics doesn't change with the location of the design team and things like NASA mission phases are good practice have close analogues elsewhere

A more pertinent point might be that some of the recommendations in here are specific to one particular kit for building CubeSats the authors are responsible for, but for many that will be the appeal...

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