Small satellites, big leverage on access to space.
CubeSats have gone from university experiments to a serious platform for science, Earth observation and connectivity. This is a working technical resource on the four systems that decide whether a mission succeeds — how they move, how they launch, how much useful payload they carry, and how they get data home — plus a proposed concept for closing the low-Earth-orbit communications blackout using a crowd of consumer Starlink terminals.
What this site covers
Each section is written for engineers and industry readers: real specifications, current pricing, and the trade-offs that actually drive mission design today.
Moving a satellite the size of a loaf of bread
Electric propulsion — gridded ion, FEEP and electrospray thrusters — now fits in a single CubeSat unit. We compare flight-proven systems and the 2026 dual-mode breakthrough from MIT.
02 · LaunchesThe economics of getting to orbit
Rideshare collapsed launch cost by an order of magnitude. We break down SpaceX Transporter pricing, deployment cadence and what a CubeSat operator actually budgets.
03 · Payload EfficiencyUseful mass, power and volume per unit
The real figure of merit isn't size — it's how much science or service you extract per kilogram, watt and dollar. How miniaturization is pushing that ratio up.
04 · Earth-to-Orbit CommsThe downlink bottleneck and the LEO blackout
A LEO satellite sees a given ground station for only minutes per orbit. We explain store-and-forward, the coverage-gap problem, and where inter-satellite links change the picture.
A proposed fix for the blackout gap
Partner with Starlink to carry the data end to end
A constellation operator like Starlink already has terminals in the most remote, ground-station-poor corners of the planet — and already owns every link from terminal to mesh to internet. The project pairs an efficient ion-propulsion bus with a proposal to partner with that operator, so a satellite over the Sahara or the Southern Ocean can hand its data to a nearby terminal and let the partner carry it the rest of the way home.
Read the full concept, the propulsion design and the coverage infographic →