The Sixth Age of Small Satellites

I've set the threshold for small satellites at 400 kg, because it seemed like a reasonable cutoff. The underlying story doesn't change if you set the threshold lower. Contact me if you want to see those plots.

This plot is the average mass of an uncrewed spacecraft launched in a given year (in blue) and the median mass of those spacecraft (in orange). If you stare at this long enough, you'll start to see the trends.

All data courtesy of Seradata.