{"id":357622,"date":"2025-12-19T07:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/357622\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T07:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T07:32:09","slug":"these-are-the-flying-discs-the-government-wants-you-to-know-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/357622\/","title":{"rendered":"These are the flying discs the government wants you to know about"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CubeSats have been a ubiquitous part of the satellite industry for nearly a quarter-century. They are based on a cube-shaped design, measuring about 10 centimeters per side, but can be scaled from a single cube \u201cunit\u201d to three, six, 12, or more, depending on mission requirements. The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/CubeSat\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CubeSat standard<\/a> has become a popular choice for <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.planet.com\/data\/imagery\/planetscope\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">commercial companies<\/a>, the military, NASA, and universities looking to build small satellites on a tight budget.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nanosats.eu\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">By one measure<\/a>, nearly 3,000 CubeSats have launched since the first one soared into orbit in 2003. After originally being confined to low-Earth orbit, they have now flown to high-altitude orbits, to the Moon, and <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/marco\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to Mars<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While CubeSats are now prolific, engineers at the Aerospace Corporation saw an opportunity to improve on the concept. Debra Emmons, Aerospace\u2019s chief technology officer, said the idea originated from Rich Welle, a scientist recently retired from the center\u2019s Experiments Lab, or xLab, division.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were asking questions,\u201d Emmons recounted in an interview with Ars. \u201cThey were looking at CubeSat studies and looking at some alternatives. The typical CubeSat is, in fact, a cube. So, the idea was could you look at some different types of form factors that might be able to generate more power \u2026 and offer up benefit for certain mission applications?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Aerospace\u2019s research team arrived at the DiskSat design. Emmons said the stackable flat-panel format is easier to pack for launch than a CubeSat. The concept is similar to SpaceX\u2019s pioneering approach to launching stackable Starlink Internet satellites, but DiskSats are significantly smaller, lighter, and adaptable to different kinds of missions.<\/p>\n<p>                        <img width=\"2560\" height=\"1766\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/starlink-direct-to-cell-scaled.jpeg\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"A batch of Starlink satellites prior to launch\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>\n      A stack of Starlink satellites prior to launch.<\/p>\n<p>          Credit:<\/p>\n<p>          SpaceX<\/p>\n<p>DiskSats have several advantages over CubeSats, according to the Aerospace Corporation. Each of the four DiskSats launched Thursday has a mass of about 35 pounds (16 kilograms), less than that of a typical 12U CubeSat. But a DiskSat has more than 13 times the surface area on a single side, providing valuable real estate for developers to load up the satellite with power-generating solar arrays, sensors, antennas, or other payloads that simply won\u2019t fit on a CubeSat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CubeSats have been a ubiquitous part of the satellite industry for nearly a quarter-century. They are based on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-357622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}