Space Is Very Big. Some of Its New Explorers Will Be Tiny.

The statement, "But never before a cubesat traveled 90milloin miles into space" triggers the following questions in me. 1) Why we haven't developed "space miles" as we define the sea travel in terms of 'nautical miles"? 2) What was the estimated or designed space miles of the subject cubesat? 3) What is the percentage of achievable space miles anticipated from a cubesat in common by NASA? 4)How many cubesats could achieve the determined 'space miles' till date? 5) Is there an improvement in design of the subject cubesat from its previous versions?

Having grown up in the age of Sputnik, a family friend, Bobby Gimm suggested I go to Purdue and take Electrical Engineering as he did. He was the designer of the Polaris submarine system. His first job was to design and test the Regulus cruise missile, a direct knock off the the nazi V1 miccile and then he designed a large waterproof covering that 2 Regulus missiles could fit under. Not much more work was done until Admiral Rickover came up with nuclear powered subs came about. The Regulus was not what they were after and Bobby and his associates came up with the Polaris system. Polaris BTW is the north star and was used initially as a guidance point. There have been many technical breakthroughs that were introduced into our lives by the technology developed for these systems. An example is Lexan plastics developed for space suits now used to bullet proof hospital pharmacy help windows, particularly in large cities like Chicago. Mars obviously once had flowing water and life is now found in deep areas of the ocean, thriving without sunlight on the chemicals found in the grey smokers miles deep beneath the ocean. These small satellites may help the world understand how much life there is out there. Given the billions upon billions of galaxies, in the visible universe - IMHO life will be found out there.

Now more than ever, people such as these brilliant scientists should have children, as many as possible. Their genetic intelligence is desperately needed to stem current highly disturbing devolutionary demographics.

“Not necessarily better things, but different, and a new way of space exploration that will complement all the larger missions that we do.” Smart play Dr. Klesh. Congress will want to know why we have to pay mega bucks for big missions when now, all we have to do is send cereal boxes for $20 mil a pop. Not better, just different and complementary. Got it. Pretty exciting though. Well done JPL and NASA! Makes me proud!

Nice to hear about something all Americans are proud of.

Technology as well as biology are replete with examples of large things evolving to small things. How exciting to see such tangible examples of miniaturization coming to space exploration. One of the things that seems to be growing larger however are space telescopes and solar panels where the more light you collect the better, and that means bigger.

What a great accomplishment! These devices and things even smaller, think jump drive sized for low mass and volume, could really be accelerated at high velocity's and replicated at low cost. This would allow a buckshot or dandelion like deployment at a particular celestial target. A variety of power sources from batteries to isotopes could be considered, so failure; it could be an option.

Here is your "Space Force" an expanding bot net of cubestats out in our solar system capturing data points. I say put them all over the solar system and let them relay signals back to Earth. Anyone can come up with a hundred uses for them. Just make sure the security is air tight.

The NYT article on cubesats was very interesting and I believe that this technology may play a role in future missions. However, it failed to point out that since the cubesats "radio is similar to an iPhone," it needs a large, nearby, companion space probe with a powerful transmitter and antenna in order to send the data it has collected back home. The cost and complexity of this companion space probe significantly impacts the cost saving brought about by the cubesat. In some ways, cubesats are just small remote sensors for the big space probe....and from this perspective, maybe they aren't revolutionary at all!