Space Missions with SOKS

Space Missions with SOKS: The First Complete Overview of Space Missions with Sub One Kilogram Spacecraft Launched in the Past (1957-2016)

Djordjevski, D.

Sundaramoorthy, P.P. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

Space Engineering / Space Systems Engineering

Space Flight

2017-03-10

The success of CubeSat, after 2005, resulted in bright future expectations of Spacecraft with a mass below one kilogram. Although these spacecraft are usually known as Pico and FemtoSat, their ambiguous nature and inconsistent use in literature resulted in the use of an alternative, namely Sub One Kilogram Spacecraft, or simply said SOKS. Slogans like ‘Smaller, Cheaper, Faster’ or ‘Do More with Less’ are easy to encounter in the proposed concepts of Space Missions with SOKS, as well as statements like ‘Think Big, Fly Small’ and ‘The next big thing in Space is something small’. However, the expectations are only based on these concepts and are in contrast with the reality, which show a limited record of launches. What would the expectations be, based on Space Missions with SOKS from the past? Would they foresee the same bright future or would they state the opposite? The search for a scientific motivation of these expectations resulted in the first complete overview of Space Missions with SOKS that were launched in the past. This thesis provides a journey through time from the controversial West Ford Needles, at the start of the Space Age, to beyond the first crowd funded Space Mission known as KickSat 1. It also resulted in a unique dataset of Space Missions with SOKS. The analysis thereof provided new insights with a clear outcome. A selection of these graphical representation is presented and discussed in this report. This thesis provides the latest update regarding, for instance, the applications and success rates, as well as the countries that have their SOKS Missions launched throughout history. The end of this thesis addresses the expectations based on these results.

Sub One Kilogram Spacecraft
SOKS Space Missions
Space Missions with SOKS
Unfeatured SOKS
Featured SOKS
Smart SOKS

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:043ce106-19d6-497a-b8d9-4e77a5d02fd2

2022-03-10

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2017 Djordjevski, D.