CubeSat is a small but smart piece of technology.
The size of a shoebox, the tiny CubeSat satellites were invented by Professor Bob Twiggs in 1999 as an educational tool for his students.
“They couldn’t put much into it — and that was the challenge, really. CubeSat forced them to stop adding items to their projects,” recalls Twiggs, chuckling.
Faster and cheaper to build and launch than conventional satellites, there are now hundreds of CubeSats orbiting the Earth, built by universities, start-ups and governments.
The BBC World Service’s People Fixing the World radio program has featured six fascinating projects involving CubeSats trying to change the planet.
1. Prevent deforestation
The Norwegian government has partnered with the satellite company Planet to combat deforestation around the world.
Planet has a constellation of 180 CubeSats continuously photographing the Earth. Its cameras have a resolution of 3m per pixel and can obtain evidence of logging from space.
“The Norwegian government pays us in exchange for tracking data from felling trees in 64 tropical countries,” said Will Marshall, CEO of Planet. “We inform the ministries responsible for forests in those countries where deforestation is taking place and Norway decides whether or not to provide funds for them, depending on whether they comply with an agreement to suspend logging.”
2. Track animals at risk of extinction
Earlier this year, a team of students from Italy and Kenya launched the WildtrackCube-Simba satellite. This CubeSat will monitor the birds and mammals of Kenya National Park.
“We had conflicts between humans and wild animals, for example, when elephants invaded crops, damaging farms and sometimes even killing people,” says Daniel Kiarie, an engineering student from Nairobi, Kenya.
“That’s why we want to help prevent this by providing information about the movement of animals in advance so that farmers can move them away before they reach the villages,” he said.
Next year, the students’ plan is to implant radio frequency tags in animals. They hope to be able to track more than just your location.
“Illegal harvesting of elephant tusks and rhino horns is a common problem in Kenya,” according to Kiarie. “We believe these tags will also be able to monitor the heartbeat and detect when the animal dies.”
WildtrackCube-Simba’s mission is three years. CubeSats typically last two to five years before being burned into the atmosphere, depending on the height of their orbit.
3. Denounce modern slavery
The University of Nottingham Human Rights Laboratory in the UK uses satellite imagery to delve into the underground world of forced labour.
More recently, CubeSat mini-satellite-generated images have been used to map the makeshift camps in Greece of Bangladeshi fruit pickers.
“We can see how these informal camps are changing over time,” says Professor Doreen Boyd, who is leading the project. “When we see land clearing, we know there will be new camps when we look again.”
The team worked together with a local NGO, which visited the camps found.
“They were able to talk to the migrants and they got a lot more information about what’s going on, in terms of living conditions… They went so far as to say: ‘Okay, we have 50 informal camps in this region, what are the priorities of the our work?'” according to Boyd.
4. Collect space junk
Russia was recently a source of international outrage when it fired a missile at one of its former spy satellites, causing thousands of fragments to scatter into low Earth orbit.
Global networks track about 30,000 pieces of space junk as it travels around the Earth, from dead satellites to rocket stages. But there are many other fragments that are too small to trace but large enough to threaten satellites or astronauts aboard aircraft.
There are many issues involved in cleaning up space junk, not to mention trying to figure out which piece of equipment belongs to which country. But scientists are closer to solving the practical issue of capturing objects in orbit thanks to CubeSats. They are using the small satellites to replicate the launch of garbage in space experiments.
In 2018, the European satellite RemoveDEBRIS managed to release and capture two CubeSats using a harpoon and a net.
This year, the Japanese company Astroscale launched the ELSA-d aircraft, which successfully released and captured a CubeSat using a magnetic system. In future tests, CubeSat will be forced to tip over as normal space junk does, before attempting to recapture it.
5. Fix wind turbines
There are several fleets of CubeSats working together above our heads to provide a low-cost ‘internet of things’. This network connects people to objects tagged with sensors in remote locations around the world.
Some farmers use sensors to monitor the water levels of water tanks or animal drinking fountains in distant locations, so they don’t have to go there and check in person.
Sensors can also be used to increase the efficiency of renewable energy. Wind turbines usually only receive maintenance visits twice a year, so it can take months for someone to discover and repair a damaged blade.
A company called Ping Services has created a sensor that monitors the sound produced by wind turbines as they spin. It can detect changes in these sounds that indicate a broken blade and notify the turbine operator through a CubeSat network. With this, the shovel can be repaired much more quickly and efficiently.
6. Explore outer space
Most CubeSat minisatellites look towards the Earth, but some of them are pointed towards the stars.
In 2018, NASA launched the first CubeSats into outer space. MarCO-A and B relayed vital information from the Insight Lander spacecraft as it descended over the surface of Mars.
Next year, NASA will launch another 10 CubeSats on its Artemis 1 rocket. The missions include testing the effects of radiation in outer space on a living organism and studies of water deposits at the lunar south pole.
They are part of a program that hopes to one day allow humans to land on the moon again.
.
