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I'm unfamiliar with the innards of the cubesat industry, but one question I have had for a while is are there any players out there offering CaaS (Cubesat as a Service)? E.g. A company sends up a bunch of cubesats, each with a variety of instrument suites, and then essentially timeshares them on some web platform.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something like 100-200k for a small one, which are rather limited in abilities and most of interest to amateur radio nerds. There are several companies that sell partially built kits with aluminum chassis, PV cells and battery/charge system.
Why aluminum chassis rather than carbon fiber or titanium?
What’s the ballpark price these days for building and launching a basic cubesat?
Depends on what you're doing. Last I checked a 1U cubesat cost around $50k to launch, but there also also says to get free or cheaper launches depending on the payload. Speaking of the payload, that will greatly impact the build cost. I imagine you could put together the Cubesat equivalent of Sputnik for like $100, then another $200 or so for the FCC paperwork. If you want to send up interesting sensors, build someth…
I'm unfamiliar with the innards of the cubesat industry, but one question I have had for a while is are there any players out there offering CaaS (Cubesat as a Service)? E.g. A company sends up a bunch of cubesats, each with a variety of instrument suites, and then essentially timeshares them on some web platform.
I'm unfamiliar with the innards of the cubesat industry, but one question I have had for a while is are there any players out there offering CaaS (Cubesat as a Service)? E.g. A company sends up a bunch of cubesats, each with a variety of instrument suites, and then essentially timeshares them on some web platform.
I'm unfamiliar with the innards of the cubesat industry, but one question I have had for a while is are there any players out there offering CaaS (Cubesat as a Service)? E.g. A company sends up a bunch of cubesats, each with a variety of instrument suites, and then essentially timeshares them on some web platform.
I would imagine the problem with this model is that there isn't actually a whole lot you can do if you rent time on a satellite. Given an orbiting sensor suite, all you can do is log the sensor data and send it back to earth - you can't really run experiments or anything. So the company that owns the satellites can do that, and then try to . . . sell the data? That's basically the business model. That works for satel…
https://www.groundstation.space/esa-funds-12-new-experiment-...
I'm unfamiliar with the innards of the cubesat industry, but one question I have had for a while is are there any players out there offering CaaS (Cubesat as a Service)? E.g. A company sends up a bunch of cubesats, each with a variety of instrument suites, and then essentially timeshares them on some web platform.
Until rockets get a lot cheaper, (come on Starship, deliver on your promise) to get a result that is commercially viable from such a timeshare option, you need to tailor your payload to deliver an outcome that can be actually desired. Everything is a trade off, and until the satellites get 5-10x cheaper to launch again, you're under very tight constraints and you truly have to trade off every other aspect (wavelength, sensor type, resolution, power level, communication budget, mass budget, geographic spread/location, orbital height) to get one good specific outcome in a 10x10x10cm form factor. Yes, you can fit mobile phone electronics in these things. But they are usually 200km+ away from what they need to measure. Until consumer off the shelf electronics can give you the sensor readings you need from an entire country distance away, the requirements is still going to need an act of true cutting edge engineering if your goal is to operate for-profit.
This is not impossible mind you, the industry will continue to mature. But it's a world of the future, not a world of the present.
I'm unfamiliar with the innards of the cubesat industry, but one question I have had for a while is are there any players out there offering CaaS (Cubesat as a Service)? E.g. A company sends up a bunch of cubesats, each with a variety of instrument suites, and then essentially timeshares them on some web platform.
I think these folks did that: https://www.kubos.com/
What’s the ballpark price these days for building and launching a basic cubesat?
As far as launch prices, I think the 50k figure given is accurate, but only through companies that resell / broker space launches. Getting your own launch outside of a reseller / broker would cost more. For instance, if you buy from SpaceX's rideshare program directly it can cost 1.2 million. This is because SpaceX's base pricing starts at a 200kg payload. Anything that weighs less is still charged at 1.2 million. However, if you go through a third party that resells the launches then it can be 50k or lower. I know I have seen one as low as 20k for a 1U launch. The main reason why its cheaper is a combination of economy of scale (launching lots of cubesats at once) and/or VC funding. The best launch prices in general tend to come from startups who are heavily subsidizing the launches with VC money.
Also, if anyone is curious about cubesats or our work in general feel free to AMA.