Cubesat (English subtitles available)

CubeSats are mini satellites designed to work at the low Earth orbits. They are about 10 cm3 in size and weigh under 2 kg. They were first designed in 1999 for students to gain experience in engineering. Thousands of CubeSats have been launched since then and the ones that traveled farthest even arrived Mars. There are future missions planned to visit outer planets with CubeSats. Due to their lightweight and small size, CubeSats have advantages over regular satellites that much less energy is needed to send them into orbit and more satellites can be packed into a rocket. All these help reduce the cost for launch.  On the other hand, all systems onboard, such as communication, power, etc., must be carefully designed to fit into a small volume.