Thanks to Bob Twiggs and Jordi Puig-Suari, a trip to the final frontier has become a small matter. Literally. Through their program CubeSat — and the tiny, cubic satellites they've developed — they have put the cosmos within reach for students and universities. Fifteen years ago, Twiggs says, anyone in aerospace engineering "would have said there's no way you can do something in space without spending millions of dollars." Twiggs wanted to change that, so the Stanford astronautics professor reached out to Puig-Suari, a professor of aerospace engineering at California Polytechnic State University. < Back | Continue >

Together, Twiggs and Puig-Suari created an entirely new launch system, one that worked with standardized satellites 10 centimeters long on each side, and weighing no more than a kilogram. The satellites are relatively cheap to build and fly — they cost about $40,000 each — and can actually be constructed and flown within a student's undergraduate career. CubeSat coordinates the launch; all participants have to do is meet the CubeSat constraints. As Twiggs puts it, "The CubeSats solve lots of problems." < Back | Continue >

So far, nearly 100 groups around the world have developed their own CubeSat missions. The model is also catching on with space science's biggest participants — even NASA has sent up a CubeSat called GeneSat-1, and both Boeing and the US Army have expressed interest in getting in on the action. The CubeSat administrators place no constraints on what groups do with the space inside their satellites. Some carry technological parts to test how they operate in space; others have small biological experiments. "It's been a mind-boggling experience," said Puig-Sauri. "It's proven that small satellites can do things that we never thought that they could do. It's changing minds." < Back | Continue >

More: cubesat.org