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From: Boris Nikolic
Sent: 6/6/2014 2:23:23 PM
To: Jeffrey Epstein (jeeyacation@gmail.com) [jeeyacation@gmail.com]
Subject: nanosatelites are getting hot
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21603441-where-nanosats-boldly-go-new-businesses-will-followunless-they-
are-smothered-excessive
Technology — Full text articles
Satellites: Space: the next startup frontier
The Economist
AROUND 1,000 operational satellites are circling the Earth, some of them the size and weight of a large car. In the past
year they have been joined by junior offspring: 100 or so small satellites, some of them made up of one or more 10cm
(4-inch) cubes. They may be tiny, but each is vastly more capable than Sputnik, the first man-made satellite launched
by Russia in 1957. And many more are coming.
Space hardware used to cost so much that it was available only to generals, multinationals and the most privileged
scientists. No more. Many of these nanosats, as small satellites weighing no more than a few kilograms are called,
have been launched for small companies, startups and university departments, sometimes with finance raised on
crowdfunding websites. Their construction costs can be down in the tens of thousands of dollars, which makes them
thousands of times cheaper than today's big satellites. Admittedly, there is much they cannot do, but with that sort of
price differential, and some ingenious use of the abilities they do have, they could be surprisingly competitive players on
a number of fronts. In the next five years another 1,000 nanosats are expected to be launched.
Two trends are setting up nanosats for further success. Like people working on everything from robots to 3D printers,
nanosat builders are harvesting the benefits of ever better, ever cheaper components built for smartphones and other
consumer electronics. Some nanosats even contain complete smartphones, making use of the clever operating
systems, radios and cameras which phones now contain. For as long as phones go on getting cheaper and more
capable, so will nanosats. The cheapest so far—a tiny chipsat—was assembled for just $25, though it has yet to be
successfully launched.
The launch systems too are getting much cheaper. SpaceX, the innovative rocket-maker founded by Elon Musk, has
already brought down the costs of getting into space; it and its competitors could reduce them a lot further. The biggest
beneficiaries will at first be people who make big satellites. But more big satellites will mean more opportunities for
small satellites to piggy-back on their launches. And some companies are looking at cheap little launch systems tailored
specifically to the needs of the nanosatellite. One reason space engineers are notoriously conservative is that the costs
of failure are high. As making and launching satellites gets cheaper, it will be ever easier for innovative, risk-taking
nanosat-makers to orbit around the lumbering incumbents.
Size does impose limits. Nanosats cannot peer as closely at the Earth or carry out as many experiments as big
satellites. But for some jobs that does not matter. The plans that companies already have include using nanosats for
monitoring crops, studying the sun and tracking ships and aircraft. Such a system might have been able to track
Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which went missing in March.
Nano can do
Yet not everyone is thrilled. One worry is that constellations of nanosats will mean a big increase in space junk; but,
operating in low-Earth orbit, they burn up on re-entry after a year or so. And being cheap, they can soon be replaced
with newer models. A more serious concern is that they are a "dual-use" technology: they could be used for military
purposes. In America this has led to onerous restrictions.
Barack Obama's administration has sensibly repealed a law of 1999 that required all satellites to be licensed by the
State Department as munitions under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). This could mean that most
commercial satellites will be removed from ITAR by the end of the year and their export administered by the Commerce
Department. But some satellite systems and spacecraft—including anything that can carry people into space—will
remain under ITAR.
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Care needs to be taken with military kit, but America's regulations still seem excessive. A regular review to distinguish
between systems that pose a real threat and ones that don't would be a help, as would better intelligence. Tight
restrictions on new technologies will not work, and will damage America's interests: exciting new ventures like nanosats
will simply move to countries from which they can be launched with greater ease.
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Nanosatellites: Nanosats are go!
The Economist
ALTHOUGH widely used, satellites are expensive to build and to launch. That began to change last year. On November
19th Orbital Sciences, an American company, launched a rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It carried 29
satellites aloft and released them into low-Earth orbit, a record for a single mission. Thirty hours later, Kosmotras, a
Russian joint-venture, carried 32 satellites into a similar orbit. Then, in January 2014, Orbital Sciences carried 33
satellites up to the International Space Station (ISS), where they were cast off a month later.
Many of these 94 satellites were built in a standard format known as a CubeSat, a 10cm (4 inch) cube weighing 1.3kg
(2.91b) or less. Some comprised units of two or three cubes. After a decade of fits and starts, during which some 75
CubeSats were launched, satellites of this scale and other small satellites are moving from being experimental kit to
delivering useful scientific data and commercial services.
In the next five years or so some 1,000 nanosats, as small satellites of 1-10kg are called, are expected to be launched.
Some will be smaller than a CubeSat; others bigger and heavier. Some are like a matryoshka doll: the Russian launch
included a satellite that launched eight smaller ones, including four PocketQubes (a 5cm cube format). One of these
smaller satellites, developed in Peru, released its own tiny bird.
There will be upsets along the way. In April, as part of a mission by SpaceX, an American company, to resupply the
ISS, a small mothership was placed in orbit carrying 104 "sprites" (pictured below). Not much larger than a postage
stamp, these contain all the basic elements of a satellite, such as a radio, aerials, a solar cell and instruments.
Developed as part of a crowd-funded project called KickSat at Cornell University, each sprite cost just $25 in parts.
Their launch was free, courtesy of NASA, the American space agency. The sprites were designed to remain in orbit for
a few weeks collecting data before burning up on re-entry. Unfortunately, due to a fault with a timer, the mothership
failed to release them before it burned up on re-entry. A second mission is now being planned.
No going back
Despite that setback, the way ahead for satellite technology is clear. "You can now, with a single chip, create most of
the capabilities that you would have found in Sputnik, but, of course, orders of magnitude faster," says Mason Peck, a
former chief technologist at NASA and now a professor at Cornell University.
The most ambitious project to date is a flock of 28 nanosats, each one three CubeSats in size (ie, 30cm long). These
were carried to the ISS in January and released in batches (pictured at the beginning of this article) through a sort of
satellite shooter developed by NanoRacks, an American company. These nanosats came from Planet Labs, a firm
based in San Francisco. The satellites now take pictures as they scan the Earth more frequently than traditional ones
and at a fraction of the cost, albeit at a lower resolution.
Planet Labs, funded modestly with $65m of private investment, says its nanosats provide much of the performance of a
conventional satellite for a fraction of the cost. That reflects a lot of antiquated technology in the space business, much
of which can be bettered by the latest off-the-shelf equipment, says Will Marshall, Planet Labs' boss. There are other
cost-saving measures. Satellites are usually built in elaborate clean rooms, but Planet Labs assembles its nanosats in
"clean-enough" rooms in its downtown offices. The company expects to put another 100 nanosats into orbit in the next
12 to 18 months.
A few miles away, in another modest San Francisco office, Nanosatisfi is working on its ArduSats. These are open-
source platforms and two have already gone up. They will contain an array of sensors and can carry out various
missions, such as locating things. More than 250,000 ships, for instance, now broadcast an automatic identification
signal than carries about 50 nautical miles. A fleet of small satellites in low orbit could pick up these signals and provide
frequent updates about the ships' positions without the vessels having to use costly dedicated satellite uplinks. Such a
system might have been able to track Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which went missing in March.
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Farther south in Mountain View, Skybox captures high-resolution imaging data from its first satellite in orbit as it
prepares another 23 to launch in the coming years. Some things, though, can be shrunk only so far and larger satellites
are needed for a telescope to obtain the higher resolutions required for the firm's analysis. While Skybox's minisatellites
weigh around 100kg, a fairly common size for small satellites, the firm proved its concept to investors using CubeSats.
"Being able to put something in space at very low cost allows you to demonstrate the technology to get more money,"
says Dan Berkenstock, one of the company's founders.
The CubeSat specification came out of the academic world in the late 1990s. Bob Twiggs, then at Stanford University
and now at Morehead State University, was frustrated by long delays on a large-satellite programme and set about
thinking how much satellite capability might be crammed into a much smaller craft that could be launched cheaply.
Space launches usually comprise one or more primary payloads and require ballast to balance the rocket. CubeSats,
reasoned Mr Twiggs, could take the place of some of this ballast, so long as they did not jeopardise the main mission.
The optimum size Mr Twiggs came up with was based on a box used to display Beanie Babies. Later, with Jordi Puig-
Suari of California Polytechnic State University, it was turned into a full specification. Mr Twiggs also developed the 5cm
PocketQube, which has a maximum weight of 180 grammes.
Small satellites benefit from the constant improvements in price and performance being achieved by the consumer-
electronics industry, particularly in smartphones. A typical phone is now likely to contain an accelerometer to measure
how fast it is moving, a magnetometer to detect magnetic fields and provide a compass reading, a GPS receiver to pick
up satellite data, multiple radios, a gyroscope to measure its position, a barometer to detect pressure, two cameras and
much more.
Last year the world's first "phonesat" went into orbit. It was a Google Nexus One smartphone incorporated into a three-
unit CubeSat called STRaND-1. This was built by Surrey Satellite Technology, a British firm that specialises in small
satellites and which is part of the European Airbus group. The idea was to test the components of the smartphone in a
space environment. The phone was loaded with a number of experimental apps for such things as taking photographs
and recording magnetic fields during orbit.
Smartphones and other consumer electronics provide a wealth of ready-made technologies that can enable a CubeSat
to perform many of the functions of a satellite a hundred times heavier and much larger, but at substantially less cost.
Including the launch, a nanosat of CubeSat dimensions might cost $150,000-1m, rather than $200m-1 billion for a full-
sized one.
Low cost and a tolerance of less-stringent standards allow multiple nanosats to be built faster. This allows for a higher
risk of failure. Nanosats have a relatively short life, which might be no more than a year or two in low-Earth orbit before
re-entering the atmosphere and burning up. Planet Labs, for one, expects to replace some of its nanosats with new
versions every year.
Into space in a flash
In an industry in which preparing some missions has taken decades, the speed at which nanosats can be developed
and put into orbit makes the biggest in the space business take notice. NASA has also found ways to leverage the
consumer-electronics industry, says Bruce Yost of the space agency's Ames Research Centre in California. His group
(some former members of which founded Planet Labs) has launched five phonesats and is now planning a small fleet of
them to experiment with communications between satellites.
Nanosat parts are readily available to researchers. One supplier, Pumpkin, operates from a residential San Francisco
neighbourhood. Andrew Kalman, its founder, started in 2000 selling standard components that Mr Twiggs and his
colleagues at Stanford needed. Pumpkin now sells items ranging from brackets for a few hundred dollars up to
complete systems for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company has also supplied America's National
Reconnaissance Office with 12 three-unit CubeSats to help the agency demonstrate the technology.
Although many satellites already circle the globe taking pictures, some of the images may not be updated for days,
months or even years. Commercial services can provide relatively rapid satellite images on demand, a number of them
taking pictures down to a resolution of 50cm (ie, 50cm x 50cm per pixel, the legal limit in America for commercial
satellites, although military ones can peer closer). But such satellites may cover only part of the globe each day. Once
their fleets are complete, Planet Labs will offer images with resolutions of between 500cm to 300cm and Skybox, with
its bigger minisatellites, 90cm. The companies will provide pictures that can be updated in hours for a variety of
scientific and commercial applications.
They could, for instance, be used to track environmental conditions, illegal tree-felling or changes in the course of
rivers—which, even in their initial deployment, Planet Labs has discovered happen surprisingly often. The frequency of
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satellite passes opens up many new possibilities, says Skybox's Mr Berkenstock. His firm can offer a stream of
analysis, such as the number of trees in a forest or the number of cars at various times of the day in parking lots across
America. Transport patterns can be followed, infrastructure monitored, the planting of fields, plumes from smokestacks
and ships in ports can all be observed. Overlaying more and more data will provide much richer visualisation, adds Mr
Berkenstock.
Nor will all the nanosats be looking downwards. Sensors facing sideways and upwards from low-Earth orbit will allow
researchers to carry out a large number of experiments and to take measurements that have previously been too costly
to consider. This includes detecting solar and cosmic radiation, interactions between magnetic fields and other forces
which together make up what is called space weather. Measuring and predicting space weather could be used to
protect billion-dollar satellites and prevent astronauts from receiving high doses of radiation. Many satellites measure
aspects of space weather, but they tend to do so only in certain directions. Part of the failed KickSat experiment was to
use the sprites to see if arrays of inexpensive devices could constantly monitor such forces.
Nanosats may be inexpensive, but resisting gravity's inexorable pull comes with a price tag. Although there is no
standard price list for a launch, a CubeSat costs roughly $100,000 to put each 1.3kg unit into low-Earth orbit. A three-
unit CubeSat might cost as much as $400,000. Jeff Foust, an analyst at Futron, a consultancy, studies launch costs
and says he has heard of charges as low as $30,000 for a single CubeSat launched on a Russian rocket.
These prices put nanosats in the reach not just of small firms, but also of start-ups and researchers relying on academic
grants. Some schools are also planning nanosat experiments. Bulk-buying launches for heavier combined payloads can
work out, per kilo, even cheaper. And these costs could come down, too. Elon Musk, SpaceX's boss, has consistently
predicted substantial price drops in launch costs, even to as little as $200 per kilo. The firm's Falcon 9 rocket recently
demonstrated a successful controlled descent of its booster stage, which would allow it to be reused.
There is plenty of innovation in putting smaller payloads into space. Interorbital Systems, a Californian company,
recently carried out a successful suborbital test flight of a small rocket (pictured right) designed to carry a 145kg
payload. The company has presold berths for dozens of CubeSats at $13,000-38,000 per unit, as well as its own
TubeSat format, which it offers to academia as kit and launch for $8,000.
NASA will test an air-launched system in 2016 with Generation Orbit, an Atlanta company. It uses a Gulfstream G-IV
executive jet to carry aloft a rocket which it fires off to put 45-50kg payloads into low-Earth orbit. NASA is also working
with Virgin Galactic, a private space venture led by Richard Branson. Virgin Galactic has developed its LauncherOne,
another air-launched rocket. It can be flown to a higher altitude and carry payloads up to 225kg.
Neither Generation Orbit or Virgin Galactic may come down much on price, as both see a profit to be made in offering
regular launches, even weekly ones. Operators whose nanosats ride shotgun as ballast in other missions do not have
much control over when they launch or the orbits they reach, says William Pomerantz, the head of special projects at
Virgin Galactic. John Olds, boss of Generation Orbit, says that as constellations of nanosats increase, placing them in a
precise orbit will be critical in keeping small-satellite networks operating.
The nanosat wars
Nanosats also face two other limiting factors: communications and propulsion. Those used for academic work
principally rely on amateur-radio frequencies, with basic equipment squeezed into the CubeSat form. Transmission and
reception are further hindered by the size of antennae or dishes, both on the ground and on the satellites. Many
academic projects set up their own listening stations and recruit space buffs who can use inexpensive kit, but these
work on an informal basis. Companies tend to use licensed frequencies and plump for more expensive radio gear to
handle their data flows. More development in communications equipment and investment in ground stations would
improve things.
The other bugbear, propulsion, is harder to solve. Currently, launch operators can prevent nanosats carrying hazardous
propellants that might be used to power them to another orbit. Nor have engineers had a reason to design tiny
spaceship engines using safer fuel. But they do now. Even a basic capability to push in one direction would allow
nanosats to remain in orbit longer, or allow a satellite that has been placed into low-Earth orbit, using an inexpensive
launch provider, to nudge itself to a higher geostationary orbit. And some might travel far beyond Earth.
Benjamin Longmier of the University of Michigan and founder of Aether Industries, which makes equipment for high-
altitude research, has begun production of a nanosat propulsion system based on his previous work at the Johnson
Space Station in Texas. This is a rocket that uses ionised propellants accelerated by magnetic fields. He has been able
to scale this down to CubeSat size, using liquid water or solid iodine as the propellant. Dr Longmier says the system
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could allow a constellation of satellites to remain in the correct position relative to one another, move satellites to polar
orbit from less-expensive launch insertions or increase an orbit.
Surrey Satellite Technology's STRaND-1 also contained a couple of experimental propulsion systems. One is a re-entry
device that ejects a mixture of water and alcohol to tip the nanosat out of orbit at the end of its useful life. The other is
an array of pulsed-plasma thrusters which heat and evaporate a material to produce a charged gas to push the satellite
along.
NASA has plans to offer a $5m prize using a six-unit CubeSat for groups to demonstrate ways both to communicate
across large distances and display the effective use of unconventional propellants. Jennifer Gustetic, in charge of
NASA's prizes, says the winner will have to show that their systems are survivable and can be operated far out into
space. The programme is still at an early stage, but it could involve transporting the CubeSats for release into orbit
around the Moon. But NASA has competition. Dr Longmier believes his technology can beat NASA to the Moon without
the use of an additional spacecraft to carry the CubeSets there. And James Cutler, a satellite-propulsion expert now
also at the University of Michigan, thinks he can propel small birds even deeper into space. Let the nanosat wars begin.
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-thirds.
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