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How to Make a CubeSat
- showerst 4y agoWhat’s the ballpark price these days for building and launching a basic cubesat?
- walrus01 4y agoSomething 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.
- metadat 4y agoWhy aluminum chassis rather than carbon fiber or titanium?
- tejtm 4y ago
- amerine 4y agoPrice.
- metadat 4y agoAt what point are the weight savings not worth the extra delta-V offset?
- Fordec 4y agoWhen the launch costs get from $10k per kg currently get down to around $100-$500 per kg
- nl 4y agoThis doesn't seem right. Carbon fibre is price competitive with aluminium.
- metadat 4y agoAluminum is comparatively cheap.. Or so I thought, I just tried to Google the comparison per KG and it's completely spammed by alibaba and miscellaneous SEO. Good luck, have fun with that. Would appreciate any industry in insider POV.
- dandelany 4y agoMaybe if you can get by with entirely COTS parts. Aluminum is much easier to cut, drill, tap and bend.
- Ephil012 4y agoI haven't really seen this to be the case personally. For a 1/32 thickness 12" x 12" sheet of carbon fiber, it is 35 dollars. This is actually this company's cheapest carbon fiber sheet too at that size. I have seen other companies charge more iirc. https://dragonplate.com/EconomyPlate-Solid-Carbon-Fiber-Sheet-1_32-x-12-x-12 https://dragonplate.com/EconomyPlate-Solid-Carbon-Fiber-Shee... Same sheet size / thickness for aluminum is 16 dollars (although I saw a shadier website selling for 12 dollars). https://www.mcmaster.com/aluminum-sheets/aluminum/multipurpose-6061-aluminum-sheets-and-bars-7/ https://www.mcmaster.com/aluminum-sheets/aluminum/multipurpo... Now for cubesat grade stuff you might want something better than what I linked, but still its a good illustration of the price difference. That is over half the price. I think the prices are maybe closer than in the past, but there is still a significant difference.
- Ephil012 4y agoI should note though that due to the strength differences this analysis may not be complete. Technically carbon fiber is stronger so you can get away with a thinner sheet while having similar strength. Using a thinner sheet might save on carbon fiber costs. However, I still believe this analysis illustrates the significant cost difference.
- 4y ago
- d_silin 4y agoNeeds to be conductive and strong enough. Aluminium works just fine for that.
- Ephil012 4y agoI work on a CubeSat team and there are a few reasons why CubeSat teams choose aluminum. 1) CubeSat spec rules. The rules guiding CubeSats technically only allow aluminum. "3.2.15 Aluminum 7075, 6061, 5005, and/or 5052 will be used for both the main CubeSat structure and the rails." You can get a waiver, but it makes more sense to just keep to the spec for practical reasons. The CubeSat spec doesn't matter as much to private companies I think, but it does matter if you are a non profit or student team trying to get a launch with NASA. 2) Ease of use. This is the biggest reason (besides the CubeSat spec) most teams use aluminum. Aluminum is just so easy to build with compared to say carbon fiber. You can easily bend and drill aluminum to make the shapes you want for cheap. Carbon fiber is just difficult to work with. 3) Temperature resistance. Carbon fiber doesn't handle extreme temps as well. Outer space is extremely cold and in some cases it can cause carbon fiber to weaken. Meanwhile, titanium is a horrible choice because of its high temperature resistance. NASA explicitly tells people to not use it because Titanium has such a high melting point it can survive re-entry to Earth and accidentally hurt someone or destroy property. 4) Air trapping. Sometimes air can get trapped in composites like Carbon Fiber. This can result in it trying to escape into space and damaging the CubeSat. It's a major risk factor and one of the big reasons to avoid carbon fiber unless it's made in a specific way to ensure that doesn't happen. Unfortunately, it is hard to find carbon fiber that meets those standards. 5) Cost. For a 1/32 thickness 12" x 12" sheet of carbon fiber, it is 35 dollars. Same sheet size / thickness for aluminum is 16 dollars. That is over half the price. However, CubeSats are small (10 cm x 10 cm x 10cm in some cases) so material cost isn't as big of a deal as you might think. The bigger concern is the added weight might increase your launch cost. However, in practice the weight savings are negligible at the smaller CubeSat sizes. I should also note that the aluminum is mostly for the frame / chassis and that doesn't consume that much material. NASA charges nothing for their student / non profit launches so weight doesn't matter there as long are you aren't over the limit. For private launches, they usually round off the weight anyhow. Sometimes to the nearest whole KG, other times to the first decimal place. Either way, you probably aren't too concerned about weight due to the limited material used. I know for ours using Carbon Fiber wouldn't actually save on launch costs due to the rounding. If we were near the border or were doing a bigger sized CubeSat, then sure it might save us, but there are other things we can do first to save weight before switching materials. I think if we were building a very big CubeSat then yeah we might become concerned over the weight costing us extra. However, weight isn't the biggest factor for us simply because of the other reasons. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't use Carbon Fiber due to the air trapping and temperature issues. Overall, the benefits of a lighter weight material like carbon fiber just isn't worth the difficulties that come with working with it. As a result, the standard is to use aluminum because it's cheap, works well, and is easy to use. Edit: I said a 1U sat was around the size of a Rubik's cube before. However, I underestimated how small Rubik's cubes are. A Rubik's cube is 5.6cm on each size vs 10cm for the 1U CubeSat.
- Mr_Twinkles 4y agoDepends on how much effort you're willing to put in. Back in the mid-2010s, our team made a 1U with a BOM cost of ~$3k, but we manufactured everything except the bare PCBs in-house. I'm sure the kits are a lot more expensive.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoDepends 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 something more durable/long lasting, have any sort of propulsion or decorating capabilities, etc the cost will start to approach or exceed what you're paying for the launch.
- showerst 4y agoThanks, that’s pretty neat. I have neither the fun stuff budget nor the purpose to justify cluttering up space for a few years, but it’s cool to see satellites drawing closer to “serious but amateur” price levels.
- Ephil012 4y agoThe other figures are correct. However, the cost to build cubesats are coming down rapidly. I work at a not for profit called isomer space which builds cubesats. We originally were looking at 50k-100k for ours, but there are a few open source projects now that provide design files to manufacture your own for way cheaper. For us, we are able to get the costs down to under 10k by doing it all in house. This is including multiple prototypes. A single satellite itself is probably 3-4k though for us. If you’re curious, the big open source project in the space is called PyCubed. A bunch of university teams use their designs now because the hardware is relatively affordable. 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.
- syedkarim 4y agoWho is offering a 1U for $20k? Is that to sun-sync, or one of the last-minute ISS specials?
- Ephil012 4y agoI don't know if I am technically allowed to say since it was given to us on a contract. I don't think I can name them specifically until we do a joint press release announcing the mission. However, I will say that it was a startup that basically had a lot of VC money to subsidize. It was to sun sync orbit though. Also, they have increased prices for future launches to like 25k or 30k or something like that. Mainly because of they are trying to wean off of subsidizing they said.
- samhuk 4y agoI'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.
- d_silin 4y agoYes? We are trying to do exactly that, but haven't raised enough money yet.
- mechagodzilla 4y agoI 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 satellite imaging companies, but what other sensors might that work for? And how many paying customers could you reasonably have?
- d_silin 4y agoYou can run ML algorithms on imagery in space, and do a bit more than just downlink sensor data. There is already one satellite that works as such an experimental platform: https://www.groundstation.space/esa-funds-12-new-experiment-to-fly-on-ops-sat/ https://www.groundstation.space/esa-funds-12-new-experiment-...
- LegNeato 4y agoI think these folks did that: https://www.kubos.com/ https://www.kubos.com/
- Fordec 4y agoyeah, but they pivoted to ground-station based software instead of true in flight services and got bought for their ground component piece of the equation. The business plan as originally that entailed didn't work out. Just too early to the game IMO rather than a bad idea. But the market dynamics that they were under in the 2016-2019 era are still today mostly the same market dynamics in 2022.
- Ephil012 4y agoOne interesting development in the area of cubesats is that most teams are shifting towards open source designs. In the past, cubesats were mostly using old and expensive hardware (like the pumpkin board). Now a lot of teams are using open source designs like PyCubed and building the electronics themselves. As a result, the price to enter the cubesat space has dropped dramatically. This has enabled a bunch of university teams to start building their own cubesats. Many of these open source projects actually use consumer / hobbyist grade components instead of using commercial aerospace-grade components. The commercial hardware for cubesats is made with a specific manufacturing process that makes them resistant to radiation in space. However, this increases manufacturing costs. Also, most of the radiation resistant hardware being sold is sort of slow / outdated. The solution some open source projects came up with was to just take components from Mouser and run their own radiation tests on it then choose the ones that fared good enough to be used in space. That way they can make satellite boards for way cheaper. Another interesting development is there are some startups now offering sub 50k launches for cubesats, such as launcher space. They essentially buy launches from SpaceX then outfit it with hardware to launch a massive amount of cubesats at once. As a result of the number of cubesats they’re able to fit on one launch, the prices are now relatively cheap compared to the hundreds of thousands if not millions required in the past. However, most of these startups are heavily subsidizing the cost using VC money so these low prices won’t stay forever. Also, if anyone has any questions about cubesats feel free to AMA. I work at Isomer space which is a not for profit building cubesats. I would love to answer any questions about cubesats or our work.
- enviclash 4y agoWhat are the main commercial or scientific uses of cubesats?
- Ephil012 4y agoFor commercial, the big use case is satellite imagery. Satellite imagery is pretty useful for mapping, agriculture, and even planning out large construction projects. CubeSats are especially useful if you need a cluster of satellites for cheap to blanket the Earth for imagery or sensor data. I think that there are also a bunch of defense companies using CubeSats for sensor data. I believe in general the US gov is investing heavily in defense companies using CubeSats. There are also other use cases involving communications. I have heard of companies looking into using them for IoT and phone communication. That might not be fully developed because right now there are some limits on data transmission speed from CubeSats. Another big use case is asset tracking. You can keep track of exactly where cargo ships are at sea. You can also use them to track planes in the air. As a whole, though a lot of these use cases I mentioned are very early stage / theoretical since CubeSats are a relatively new tool for companies to use. In terms of practical use right now, I think it's mostly satellite imagery / sensor data that it's being used for. However, I expect it to expand in the future to the other use cases I mentioned and many more. In terms of scientific, I think it's best to think of CubeSats as a floating lab. You can basically stick whatever you want on there (size permitting). One thing you can do is stick cameras on there to track climate change through a cluster of tiny cheap CubeSats. Another is to put sensors to measure different particles in space. CubeSats are also useful for testing out new forms of propulsion like ion thrusters. You can also use them to test new materials in space. I have even heard putting bacteria inside CubeSats to see how they react in space. In general, CubeSats are just insanely useful for collecting sensor data for research and putting items in space to see how they react. The big appeal though is you can do all of this stuff I mentioned for the fraction of the cost of a normal satellite. As a result, CubeSats are great for smaller companies or researchers who don't have unlimited cash to spend on a big satellite. Hope all this info helps!
- tagami 4y agoUnless you want a specific orbital inclination, or are doing is specifically as an engineering exercise, building a cube lab to be installed on a platform like the ISS means lower complexity and lower cost. You can focus on your research goals AND you can even get your payload back to Earth.
- Ephil012 4y agoIf anyone is curious, I believe the big provider for this is Nanoracks. Never used them ourselves for our CubeSat due to our specific goals. However, they are extremely useful for stuff like sensor data, tech demos, research, and testing.
- tagami 4y agoThere are a number of commercial service providers, nanoracks being one of them. It’s best to shop around as they have developed specialized solutions (chip cells, partial/hyper gravity, crystalography, plant bio, etc.)