On April 18, 2017, o UPSatthe first Greek nanosatellite open design and open software, which together with the DUTHSat constituted the Greek entries in the large international research mission QB50 with nanosatellites built by universities. UPSat’s successful launch was met with excitement, but a new book describes its “exciting and unconventional journey into space”.

This is the book in its English language Gold coinassistant professor of the Department of Digital Industry Technologies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and Francesco Paolo Appio (Francesco Paolo Appio), professor at the Paris Business School, entitled “Cubesats: Invading and Shaping the Space Industry” (Elgar publications). Through the book the authors attempt to outline more broadly the transformative role of the new CubeSats nanosatellite technology and its contribution to the democratization of space exploration.

“The main value of CubeSats is perhaps their very existence, in the sense that now the field of space exploration and exploitation has de facto changed: new stakeholders have entered what is now called New Space. In this new context, space operators are transforming, adopting processes from the world of developers, such as hackathons, while scientists are designing original missions. At the same time, space becomes a factor in the transformation of existing services and products by adding new features and functions to goods that were not previously connected to satellites, a “spatialization” of them”, explains Paris Chrysos to APE-MPE.

In the book, the two authors spoke with scientific groups developing nanosatellites in different parts of the world. One of them was the team of the University of Patras and the non-profit organization “Libre Space Foundation”who built UPSat. Through the narratives, the various difficulties and delays that they faced during the construction are highlighted, as well as the dynamics of the team that, through the close cooperation of its members and working day and night, managed to complete the project.

“Revealing the story of UPSat’s development reveals an exciting and unconventional space journey that would be difficult to imagine in environments using conventional technologies,” describe the two authors.

It is no coincidence that they call the UPSat project a “Black Swan” as it “challenges our perception of how things should be. In a normative sense, one could say that everything went “wrong”. However, standard logics often undermine the process by which knowledge is formed, the way a technology is gradually shaped before it becomes the norm.’

Also, for the writing of the book, groups were studied in five other countries and three continents: in Paris with Ecole Polytechniquein London with the University College of Londonin the US with the Arizona State University and the Berkeleyin Belgium with the Von Krauman Karman Institute and in Shanghai with the Jiao Tong University.

“Is the volume of a few cubic centimeters enough to house a personal, universe-spanning ambition?” the authors asked before chronicling the history of people building CubeSats. Through this research, the complexity of the development process of these satellites, the technological challenges and the challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration are highlighted.

Despite the cultural peculiarities of the different environments investigated, explains Mr. Gold in APE-MPE, the teams share some common characteristics “that help them rise to an unprecedented challenge to which they have set themselves.” One of these common features is “the creative appropriation of the knowledge of the established space industry and its transmutation at the level of nanosatellites”. “A second result worth mentioning is the identification of the limits of some classic management theories (modular structure of technologies, project management), since to the extent that innovations appear, the required action exceeds the usual norms. Here, a “normal” division of labor proves to be insufficient and new forms of action take its place”, continues Mr. Gold.

A third common feature identified is “highlighting the importance of familiarity for innovative collaboration”. Finally, Mr. Chrysos found that in the CubeSats field “we have researchers, not businesses or users, who innovate, and researchers are not limited to writing articles, but developing the technologies themselves.” This, he adds, is a further successful test of the theory of “Innovation by developers”, which he had captured in his earlier research.

Moreover, the two authors wanted to highlight innovation “as an open, outcome-uncertain process” instead of the usual investigation of innovation in terms of outcome. “Our study sheds light on a space where technique interacts with group dynamics and subjects’ personal expectations,” points out Mr. Gold. In fact, he characteristically says that “nano-satellite technology could be a metaphor for the contemporary debate about university research and the possibilities of development through new technologies. Drawing a parallel between scientific revolutions and technological disruption, the book introduces the reader to the world of technological innovation by highlighting the personal journeys that often lie behind technological challenges.”

The assistant professor of the Department of Digital Industry Technologies of EKPA also emphasizes that “watching the developers of nanosatellites confront an unprecedented project, we simultaneously discover new ways of cooperation, as the usual norms of division of labor show their limits. A special way of developing technologies thus emerges, offering new opportunities and projecting new dreams for the limits of human ingenuity.”

But what are the growing possibilities of CubeSats and what is their future in the space industry, we ask Mr. Gold. “CubeSats are now creating a parallel space industry, with hundreds now launched each year. The book characterizes this market as a “fog economy” since there is a two-pronged approach: on the one hand there are uses of nanosatellites for which the value is known, where developers can aspire to replace established business models and structures. On the other hand, there is a dynamic for new types of missions, a value recognized and explored mostly by science and here the business model does not enter as a prerequisite, but new horizons for knowledge are opened, such as risky missions that cannot be carried out by satellites that we knew until now”.

“As this technology matures, the related activity will fall more into the domain of classical economic theories and development processes will turn from adventure to routine. However, this course leaves in its path new structures, creates new habits, shuffles the deck of factors, giving opportunities to young people to enter the field. This is certainly how new masters of the game are formed. At the same time, however, it is important to mention that, despite its emblematic and world-historical achievements, the “traditional” space industry remained for many years conservative in terms of its technologies. The reason is very simple: as the risk of failure is very high – and correspondingly the cost “astronomical” – there is a tradition of maintaining successful technologies and preferring them to new ones. “Nanosatellites, however, allow a level of experimentation and technological exploration that would have been unimaginable before,” emphasizes Mr. Gold.

The book “CubeSats: Invading and Shaping the Space Industry” will be presented this Tuesday, November 12, at 6 p.m., at the Kostis Palamas building of EKPA (48 Akadimias, 1st floor). The former dean of the School of Positive Sciences of EKPA, Ioannis Emmanuel, the vice-president of the Department of Digital Industry Technologies of EKPA, Maria Tzamtzi, and the author, Paris Chrysos, will talk about the book. Registration to watch the event is done at the link https://forms.gle/AwW6nzWZ7E2pejcdA