Adaptive Medias Inc (fka ADTM)

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$ADTM :) Making Earth Observation Cost-Efficient with Nanosatellites

The future of satellites is nanosatellites. However, the small size of these space technologies does not limit the impact they can have.

Making Earth Observation Cost Efficient with Nanosatellites

Ever since Russia launched the first man-made satellite in 1957, the Earth has seen a continuous rise in the number of satellites in orbit, with no signs of slowing. 2020 saw the launch of over one thousand new satellites, with 2021 already overcoming this number. As of September, 1,400 had been released.

One of the key reasons that the number of satellites launched has increased so rapidly is because advances in technology have made such space modules smaller and smaller.

As professor Adriano Camps, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and IEEC/CTE-UPC, points out in a paper for the journal Satellites Missions and Technologies for Geosciences¹, it isn’t like satellites were ever particularly big. Sputnik 1, for example, was a 58-cm-diameter metal sphere, weighing approximately 84 kg, with four radio antennas transmitting at 20.005 and 40.002 MHz.

One of the most important scientific achievements of Sputnik was the measurement of the density of the upper atmosphere and the gathering of information about the ionosphere?—?the ionized part of Earth’s upper atmosphere. This mission to investigate Earth from orbit first established with this first satellite has continued with its more recent and diminutive successors.

https://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=5836