Space Program Innovation: One Small Satellite at a Time

The following is an excerpt from the cover story by Dan Linehan in the April 2019 issue of Science & Technology Review.

The population of human-made satellites orbiting Earth has skyrocketed over the past 60 years. Launches nearly doubled from 2016 to 2017, and a significant contributor to this growth has been the development and implementation of small satellites that are easier and less expensive to build and more cost efficient to launch than conventional ones.

Today, the hottest destination for these spacecraft is low-Earth orbit (LEO)—in the range of a few hundred kilometers above the planet’s surface.

To read the full story, go to Science & Technology Review.

To read about NIF’s connection to CubeSats, go to “NIF and the Rise of LLNL’s Nanosatellites (Part 1)”.

Updated on July 18, 2019

—Dan Linehan

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