CubeSat for Under $1000?

Want to build your own CubeSat but have been put off by the price? There may be a solution in the works — [RG Sat] has challenged himself to design and build one for less than $1,000. (Video, embedded below.)

He begins by doing a survey of available low-cost options in the first video, and finds there isn’t a complete package for less than $10,000. By the time you added all necessary “options”, the final tally would probably be well over $20,000.

His idea isn’t just a pipe dream, either. In the the fifteen months since he began the project, [RG Sat] has designed and built the avionics and electrical power system circuit boards, and is currently testing his sun tracker design. Software is written in Rust, just because he wants to learn something new. You can check out the hardware and software design files on the project’s GitHub repositories, if you are inclined to build one yourself.

[RG Sat] lays out a compelling case, but we wonder if there’s a major gotcha lurking in the dark somewhere. In fact, [RG Sat] himself asks the question, “where do these high costs come from?” Our first instinct is to point the finger at qualifying parts for space and/or testing. But if you don’t care about satellite longevity or failure rates, then maybe [RG Sat] is onto something here.

Stepping back and looking at the big picture, however, the price of a CubeSat can be a drop in the bucket when compared to the launch costs, unless you’ve got a free ride. Is hardware the best place to focus cost reduction efforts?  Regardless, [RG Sat]’s project is bound to provide interesting and useful results whether he succeeds in his goal or confirms that indeed you need $10,000 to build a CubeSat. We’ll be following his progress with interest.

We’ve written about open source CubeSats before, and also a port-mortem analysis of a failed mission that contains some good lessons. Thanks to [Jeremy Grosser] for the tip.