Starting a Small Spacecraft Program: Types of Programs and Their Benefits and Drawbacks

The previous two chapters have considered important foundational questions regarding the formation of a small spacecraft program. Chapter 2 considered why institutions might seek to start a small spacecraft program. Chapter 3 assessed several different approaches to the question of what type and scale of a program to form, in terms of a key question: whether to design and build a spacecraft from scratch, buy a vendor kit, or take a hybrid approach. This brief chapter deals with yet another foundational question for small spacecraft program formation: what the focus of the program will be. For an academic institution, this could be one of four principle types: a research program designed to (a) reach internal goals or (b) goals of a partner entity. The program could, alternately (c) focus on only educational pursuits. This, of course, was the original goal of the CubeSat form factor [1]. Alternately, it could (d) seek to combine both research and educational goals.

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