Sea ice is a crucial component of the climate system and improved measurements will help us better understand the impact of climate change in Antarctica. One project we are involved in uses CubeSats and machine learning techniques to monitor Antarctic sea ice from space. Small satellites have opened exciting new ways to explore our planet and beyond. You can now build, test, launch and receive data from your own CubeSat for less than US$200,000.
Twiggs says the shape and size were inspired by Beanie Babies, a kind of collectable stuffed toy that came in a 10cm cubic display case.Ĭommercial launch providers like SpaceX in California and Rocket Lab in New Zealand offer “rideshare” missions to split the cost of launch across dozens of small satellites. They were developed in 1999 by two professors in California, Jordi Puig-Suari and Bob Twiggs, who wanted graduate students to get experience designing, building and operating their own spacecraft. Since 1998, more than 3,400 nanosatellite missions have been launched and are beaming back data used for disaster response, maritime traffic, crop monitoring, educational applications and more.Ī key innovation in the small satellite revolution is the standardisation of their shape and size, so they can be launched in large numbers on a single rocket.ĬubeSats are a widely used format, 10cm along each side, which can be built with commercial off-the-shelf electronic components. So-called nanosatellites, with a payload of less than 10kg including fuel, can be launched individually or in “swarms”. More affordable options are now democratising access to space. The price tag for the International Space Station, which has hosted almost 3,000 scientific experiments over 20 years, ran to US$150 billion, with another US$4 billion each year to keep the lights on.Įven weather satellites, which form the backbone of our space-based observing infrastructure and provide essential measurements for weather forecasting and natural disaster monitoring, cost up to US$400 million each to build and launch.īudgets like these are only available to governments and national space agencies – or a very select club of space-loving billionaires.
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first aligned image of a star. The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in December 2021 and will search for the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe, had a final price tag of US$10 billion after many delays and cost overruns. The cost of all that research can be, well, astronomical. Our research stretches to space in search of answers to fundamental questions about how our ocean is changing in a warming world, or to study the supermassive black holes beating in the hearts of distant galaxies. According to Bedding, the newly discovered planet named Kepler 37b is about a third the size of Earth, and orbits its host star every 13 days.
We are scientists who study our planet and the universe beyond.