NASA Has Big Plans for Tiny CubeSats
Tiny CubeSats could soon play a big role in space exploration.
For example, NASA is set to launch one of these miniature satellites — the "IceCube" craft, which is the size of a loaf of bread — in 2016 to test technology for a future mission. The result could be big savings in development costs down the road, IceCube team members say.
"We're using IceCube to test a radiometer that we want to fly on a big space mission," Jeffrey Piepmeier, associate head of the microwave instruments and technology branch at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. "Climate scientists have never used this frequency to measure cloud ice from space before."