Cubesats survey : capabilities and applications with a glance on the iraqi satellite program activities

Abstract EN

CubeSats started as educational tools and have evolved to a standard platform for technology demonstration and scientific instrumentation in about 10 years.

Using Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components and some miniaturization technologies led to many scientific value missions.

Furthermore, advantages of reducing the cost and development time compared with larger satellites, and the possibility of launching a large number of CubeSats with a single rocket launch, have led to new mission architectures consisting of very large constellations or clusters of CubeSats.

These new architectures combine between the temporal resolution of Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) missions and the spatial resolution of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) missions, thus breaking a traditional trade-off in earth observation mission design.

This paper shows the current capabilities of CubeSats in the field of Earth observation missions, also; it introduces the applications, capabilities and limitations of CubeSats in various fields during the past, present and near future with a glance on the experience of Iraq in small cubic satellites.