Future spacecraft could be getting around under the power of sails. But of course, with no wind in space, these sails are catching another method of propulsion – photons from starlight. The tech is soon due to be demonstrated in action onboard LightSail 2, a small satellite due to launch next week.
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If you thought SpaceX launching 60 Starlink satellites at once was impressive, Cornell University managed 105 small satellites. The ChipSats, called Sprites, forming a swarm of cracker-sized nanosatellites were deployed from the Kicksat-2 CubeSat on March 18, 2019 at an altitude of 300 km (186 mi).
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Remember the garbage-collecting Oscar the Grouch, from Sesame Street? Well, an orbital-debris-gathering spacecraft now bears his name. Known as OSCaR ("Obsolete Spacecraft Capture and Removal"), the semi-autonomous craft is currently being developed at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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Lockheed Martin is rolling out a new class of CubeSat that can be reprogrammed in orbit like a smartphone to take on new missions. The new SmartSat technology is being integrated into over 10 satellite programs to start with and the prototypes will be launched this year.
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In recent years, shoebox-sized "CubeSats" have made satellite technology available to groups that could otherwise never afford it. A new propulsion system, developed at Indiana's Purdue University, could now also make the devices more reliable.
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The two MarCO CubeSats that accompanied NASA's InSight mission on its voyage to Mars have gone silent. Mission control has been unable to contact either of the briefcase-sized spacecraft for over a month as they continue to hurtle into deep space beyond the orbit of the Red Planet.
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NASA is poised to send larger and larger telescopes into space over the next couple of decades and a team of researchers at MIT is working out how to use laser-equipped CubeSats to keep them fixed on target.
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NASA's Venture Class Launch Services program aims to use a new breed of smaller rockets to let CubeSats ride in luxury on their own personal, purpose-built spacecraft. The agency has now carried out its very first launch as part of this endeavor.
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An MIT team is working on a new aiming system that will allow CubeSats to use lasers for high-bandwidth communications with Earth. The new laser-pointing platform uses a second directional beam to keep the primary data beam on focus, allowing the CubeSat to transmit large amounts of data.
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Back in May, NASA launched some extra luggage along with the Mars InSight lander – two briefcase-sized CubeSats named MarCO-A and MarCO-B. These two little spacecraft are the first of their kind to venture into deep space, and now they've sent us back their first glimpse of the Red Planet.
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