Mindset is changing
“As for the future of CubeSats, Puig-Suari is taking the small is beautiful route.
“I think we’re starting to get interesting. The technology is shrinking and we can do useful things,” Puig-Suari said, thanks to micro-electronics, powerful processors, tiny cameras and other systems.
“There was a lot of skepticism on the part of industry,” Puig-Suari said, “that CubeSats couldn’t really do anything useful because of size.”
That mindset is changing, Puig-Suari added, with CubeSat developers now working on attitude determination, control and pointing accuracy—features that can lead to an array of future applications.
“Things are picking up,” Puig-Suari suggested. “We’re starting to see industry CubeSats that are not from universities. NASA is building them; Boeing and The Aerospace Corporation too. That’s very different from the past. That kind of shows that there’s something here that wasn’t here before.”
Soda Can-Sizeed Satellites
