Observations on the CubeSat Industry

I spend a great deal of time working with and speaking to people building CubeSats. From hardware suppliers to startups to established large satellite companies exploring CubeSats. I’ve gained a couple of observations concerning the current and future state of cubesats.

1. Cubesats will settle around the 6U size. I believe we have hit the bottom of how small a satellite can be at a 1U CubeSat and still be commercially useful. While a few have been successful with a 1U, sizes have grown back to 3U, 6U and 12U being the sweet spot. I think we will see more and more 6U and 12U in the near future.
2. CubeSat constellations will be smaller than in the past few years. Planet and Spire are building large constellations using the 3U CubeSat platform. The reason is they need lots and lots of medium resolution data. The constellations that will be announced in 2017–18 will be after high-resolution data (6U or bigger). This data will be for niche markets where the economics do not support 100s of satellites.
3. CubeSat hardware suppliers will start to not sell single subsystems, only complete buses. A few years ago to build a CubeSat you would buy the best components from the best supplier and integrate the satellites yourself. In the coming years, only universities will be doing this. Most hardware vendors have all the subsystems and are selling complete buses. Vendors can manufacture them in bulk and therefore cheaper than operators can. Operators need to focus on the payload and leave the bus to the hardware people. At scale, it makes sense financially to build cubesats in house, but if observation 2. is correct, then we won’t see that scale much and economics will prove the best choice is to just buy the bus. It is also less risk to buy a complete bus.

These observations aren’t crazy or that insightful. These trends are already visible in the market. The CubeSat market is starting to mirror the more traditional space manufacturing industry. If that is true, then will cubesats stop innovating and start thinking like the traditional space industry?