BurstCube was a 6U CubeSat designed to detect and characterize short Gamma-ray Bursts (sGRBs) and other short gamma-ray transients.  sGRBs are the result of the collision of two incredibly dense Neutron Stars.  As these two stars inspiral into collapse they emit gravitational waves and after the merger, a huge explosion occurs creating jets of matter and light.    BurstCube’s instrument was a custom designed gamma-ray detector made up of four Cesium Iodide scintillators coupled to arrays of Silicon Photomultipliers designed to detect these brief events.    The spacecraft, based on the Dellingr design, was built at NASA/Goddard using a combination of commercial and custom components.   It was launched in March 2024 and deployed into Low Earth Orbit from the International Space Station on April 18, 2024, with science operations beginning after a commissioning period.  Several technical issues limited continuous data taking but due to the heroic efforts of the full operations, ground, communications, and engineering team, it was still able to detect multiple GRBs and a solar flare.  BurstCube was also the first CubeSat to send messages through NASA’s TDRS system, pioneering the distribution of rapid astronomical alerts to the science community.   BurstCube reentered the atmosphere in September of 2024.

The Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) mission led by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory focuses on a science problem ideally suited to leverage modern-day small satellite technology. The spatiotemporal morphology of the ionospheric electrojets flowing in the very low Earth orbit (VLEO) regime is a priority for NASA science and space weather research. Launched on March 15, 2025 aboard the SpaceX Transporter-13 rideshare, EZIE combines state-of-art commercial CubeSat buses, novel miniature instruments, propulsion-less constellation management, and an innovative remote sensing technique to map the structure and temporal evolution of this atmospheric phenomenon. 

The three in-line 6U CubeSats flying in sun-synchronous orbit each host a single Microwave Electrojet Magnetogram (MEM) instrument — designed and built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — that uses four compact spectropolarimeters to map the 2-D electrojet structure. EZIE remotely senses the fingerprint of current–induced magnetic field perturbations through the Zeeman splitting of the 118-GHz oxygen thermal emission near the electrojets (~105 km). This novel microwave technology, developed for Earth science and applied to heliophysics for the EZIE mission, is expected to provide answers to many longstanding questions about the region coupling Earth and space. Variable temporal sampling of the auroral oval is accomplished by managing the inter-satellite spacing between the commercial CubeSats, developed by Blue Canyon Technologies, solely through differential drag maneuvers. 

EZIE has also expanded its science mission to include geomagnetic field citizen science, developing hundreds of Raspberry Pi–based EZIE-Mag kits for distribution to educators, museums and libraries around the world to support and enhance its ground-based observations. EZIE was made possible through a unique collaboration of university, government and commercial organizations, which successfully merged industry standards with agile commercial processes and technology while maintaining the oversight and accountability critical for mission success.

Pixxel’s Fireflies mission marks a significant milestone in the future of Earth observation. Built to meet the growing demand for high-frequency, high-resolution environmental intelligence, the Fireflies offer unmatched spectral depth in a compact form factor. Once fully realized, with more than 250 spectral bands at 5-meter resolution, the constellation is designed to deliver daily calibrated hyperspectral imagery for any location on Earth, transforming how we monitor agriculture, mining, energy, climate, and more. 

In January 2025, Pixxel launched the first three satellites of the Fireflies constellation, the world’s first commercial 5-meter hyperspectral satellites fully designed, built, and integrated in-house. These satellites are currently operational and performing as expected. Their successful launch and sustained performance have validated Pixxel’s proprietary sensor design, onboard calibration systems, and precision orbital phasing. The mission’s core goals: to prove on-orbit sensor performance, enable early data access for key users, and lay the foundation for daily global imaging, have all been achieved. 

These three Firefly satellites are already delivering high-quality data to over 65+ paying customers, including NASA, Rio Tinto, and the Indian Ministry of Agriculture. The remaining three satellites in this phase have completed integration and testing and have been shipped to the launch site, with deployment scheduled in the coming months. Once fully deployed, the constellation will unlock daily revisit capability and consistent coverage with the highest commercially available hyperspectral resolution.

Fireflies is more than a satellite mission. It is the foundation of Pixxel’s broader vision to make hyperspectral intelligence an everyday tool for monitoring the health of our planet. With vertically integrated satellite manufacturing, a full-stack data platform, and growing global partnerships, Fireflies is shaping a new era of practical, scalable Earth observation from space.

Odin is the first commercial spacecraft explicitly designed, built, and flown as a prospecting mission to identify a potential M-type asteroid for future AstroForge mining missions. Developed by AstroForge, Odin launched on February 26, 2025 on Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission and travelled 845,000 km into Deep Space before losing communication. Its primary objective was to conduct a fly-by of the asteroid 2022 OB5 and take an optical image of it.

The mission achieved multiple firsts: it established two-way communication from beyond lunar distance (C3 > 0), deployed into its intended deep-space trajectory, and demonstrated core systems including power management, avionics, thermal control, and communications. Odin marked a milestone in private spaceflight by achieving operational contact ~124,000 miles from Earth with dish-pointing requirements within 0.15 degrees—a feat previously limited to government missions.

Despite early successes, the mission faced compounding challenges due to ground station failures, solar panel deployment uncertainties, and possible spacecraft tumbling. While confirmed communications ceased after 48 hours, valuable telemetry was captured, and optical tracking confirmed Odin continued along its expected path.

Crucially, Odin’s greatest contributions lie in its lessons: the mission revealed the complexities in global comms infrastructure, taught critical spacecraft testing strategies, and informed risk-based decision-making for future missions. These insights are now being directly implemented into AstroForge’s follow-on spacecraft, Vestri, a 200kg deep-space miner slated to launch in early 2026.

Odin was a blueprint for iterating fast, learning faster, and proving that deep-space infrastructure can be built at a fraction of the traditional cost. In success and in silence, Odin taught us how to mine the future.

PhiSat-2 is a cutting-edge Earth observation mission developed under the European Space Agency’s Φ-sat programme. Building on the success of PhiSat-1, PhiSat-2 introduces significant advancements in onboard artificial intelligence (AI) processing, enabling the generation of actionable data directly on the satellite. The spacecraft is a 6U CubeSat equipped with a multispectral instrument covering seven bands in the VIS-NIR range, similar to Sentinel-2, plus a panchromatic band used as reference for bands co-registration. Launched on August 16th 2024 and operating at 510 km altitude, it achieves a ground sampling distance of 4.8 metres. A key innovation is its onboard processing capability, which allows up to Level 1C image pre-processing and Level 2 AI-driven analysis, reducing latency and enhancing responsiveness. Six AI applications are currently present onboard and routinely operated. These applications support diverse use cases, including Sat2Map for the automatic detection of streets, AVA for vessel detection and tracking, deep image compression for single band and multi bands data compression, cloud detection, fire detection and marine anomaly detection with performance metrics defined as part of the mission success criteria.  Milestones include the successful In-Orbit Commissioning Review (IOCR) on 9 April 2025, marking the transition to nominal operations. The formal handover to ESA managed missions occurred on 19 June 2025, initiating Phase E2 operations and expanding data access to a broader user base (https://earth.esa.int/eogateway/news/ai-enabled-satellite-enters-operational-phase). The mission’s development involved rigorous system engineering, risk management, and qualification planning. It also included the creation of a robust app development environment and validation of all the E2E chains related to the different applications. Data is downlinked four times daily via K-SAT Lite in Svalbard, ensuring timely delivery to users. PhiSat-2 exemplifies ESA’s commitment to innovation in space-based AI, paving the way for future missions with autonomous data processing capabilities and scalable user engagement.

The PREFIRE Thermal Infrared Spectrometers (TIRS) incorporate thermopile technologies at novel scale in a first of its kind far-infrared spectroradiometric system.  The state-of-the-art thermopile devices, fabricated at JPLs Micro-Devices Laboratory, exhibit (a) four times more pixels, (b) digital readout circuitry, and (c) a micro-electronics interface, in comparison to similar sensitivity detectors in traditional (filtered, not spectral) radiometric instrumentation.  The increase in pixel count, combined with all reflective optics that include a custom shaped-groove diffraction grating, enable SmallSat scale spectral studies of Earth’s outgoing longwave radiation beyond 15 microns where current Earth observing spectroradiometers are limited by traditional detector technologies.  The PREFIRE 6U CubeSats, launched on May 25th  and June 5th, 2024 with their TIRS instruments, have already collected the required scientific data, covering both of Earth’s poles with both sub-diurnal and seasonal sampling of a variety of surface types, to assess far-infrared model biases in the surface/atmosphere energy exchanges of Earth’s rapidly changing polar regions.

PUNCH is a constellation of four smallsats, averaging 63 kg each, designed to image the Sun’s outer corona and the solar wind itself as it streams across the solar system. Each smallsat hosts a single instrument: one includes a coronagraph called the Narrow Field Imager with a tubular baffle and solar occulter, while the other three host heliospheric imagers. These Wide Field Imagers are deeply baffled to reduce direct sunlight by 16 orders of magnitude. PUNCH heavily leveraged commercial subsystems, using a creative, elegant design to allow the two very distinct types of instruments to operate using essentially the same subsystems. This approach enabled the constellation’s incredible scientific capacity within the constraints of a Small Explorer (SMEX) budget. The four smallsats operate as a single “virtual instrument” the size of Earth to observe 90 degrees of the sky centered on the Sun, imaged every four minutes. PUNCH images plasma clouds a thousand times fainter than the Milky Way to capture the glimmer of the solar wind. Novel electrolytic thrusters — running on safe, non-toxic, inert, distilled water — maintain the constellation geometry by creating individual small charges of hydrogen fuel as needed. Onboard computing includes significant image processing and autonomy to manage the large volume of data produced by its 2K x 2K CCD cameras operating at a continuous cadence. The ground station integrates the images from the four smallsats, producing continuous 3D movies of the solar wind. The PUNCH science operations center includes the most sophisticated routine photometric pipeline ever constructed for a smallsat mission, autonomously processing photometrically accurate data stitched together from the four separate cameras. PUNCH launched on March 11, 2025, and by the end of May 2025 had demonstrated continuous tracking of an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection across the inner solar system for the first time.

Mark Rober’s “SAT GUS” mission is a playful yet educational STEM satellite project launched in January 2025. This 12U CubeSat from Tyvak International carries a payload designed by Mark Rober's chief engineer, Ian Charnas, with partnership from Google and T-Mobile. The payload includes an onboard Google Pixel smartphone to display fan-submitted selfies on its screen, then orients itself toward Earth and photographs the display against our planet as a backdrop. These “space selfies” are transmitted back to participants, making space exploration accessible to the public while showcasing how small-satellite tech works and inspiring engineering curiosity around the globe. More at spaceselfie.com

SATGUS fully operational and has taken "space selfies" of more than 10,000 user submitted photos

SNOOPI, selected under the InVEST program of NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office was a technology demonstration mission to show the fundamental feasibility of Earth remote sensing using P-band (225 and 390 MHz) Signals of Opportunity (SoOp).  This technique is different from other radar remote sensing methods. In contrast to the conventional approach of generating and transmitting a specific radio signal toward Earth and analyzing the returned signal, SoOp will take advantage of already-available telecommunications signals from geostationary orbit (20,000 miles above Earth’s surface).  In the case of P-band, this enables making measurements in frequencies which are very difficult to utilize from space, due to the large amount of interference from communications transmissions, the competition for electromagnetic spectrum, and the large antenna size required for conventional approaches in radiometry.  SoOp essentially utilizes some of the very same sources that would cause interference in conventional microwave remote sensing. Communications signals are much more powerful than the backscatter received by a radar or the natural emission from the Earth surface used in radiometry. Furthermore, SoOp signal processing methods do not require a large antenna to achieve scientifically useful resolution on the ground.  In contrast, NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission is currently using a 6-meter antenna to measure surface soil moisture using L-band, which at 1/5 the frequency of P-band.  P-band, can penetrate about five times deeper into the soil overcoming the L-band limitation, but would require an antenna 5 times as large. 

SNOOPI was deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on April 18, 2024.  Six (6) data collections have been made.  SNOOPI has made the first observation of coherent reflections from the ocean surface using small cross-dipole communication antennas deployed from a 6 U cubesat. This has been a critical development in demonstrating the feasibility of P-band SoOp remote sensing from space. 

The vision is that scientists ultimately could fly a constellation of tiny satellites employing this technique to determine the amount of water stored in the root-zone soil and snowpack, measurements not possible with current space-based technology.  Additionally, this technique may also be capable of sensing other essential weather and environmental variables including sea surface height and ionospheric total electron content over the ocean surface.

Waratah Seed-1 is Australia's first commercial ride-share satellite mission, launched on 16 August 2024 via SpaceX's Transporter-11 from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Developed by the Waratah Seed Consortium - led by CUAVA at the University of Sydney and supported by the NSW Government - the 6U CubeSat aimed to provide spaceflight qualification opportunities for New South Wales startups and research institutions. Carrying nine payloads from five startups and three universities, including technologies like perovskite solar cells, edge computing, electrical-permanent magnetorquers and biodegradable testing materials, the mission successfully demonstrated the functionality of these innovations in orbit. Eight of the nine payloads were fully commissioned and performed desired experiments/demonstrations, with data received at ground stations, and the satellite remained operational for over 10 months. This mission not only validated emerging Australian space technologies but also fostered collaboration across academia, industry, and government, marking a significant milestone in the nation's space capabilities.