What’s Next after Industry Disruption by CubeSats? – Industry Disruption by Open Source

A decade ago, CubeSats featured almost exclusively in the academic domain only. The same can be said today for Open Source satellites. In the same way that CubeSats and the associated development mindset started in the academic community and are now embraced by commercial, civil and defence communities, the goal of the Open Source Satellite Programme is to initiate a similar outcome for open source satellite mission architectures by developing a design that is freely available for all to use. KISPE’s goal is to build a community of open-source contributors, collaborators and beneficiaries, including those from CubeSat and SmallSat teams who are at the forefront of adopting and championing non-traditional approaches to delivering space missions. A key characteristic of open-source projects is stakeholder engagement: to collaborate, iterate and improve elements of the architecture and design - and ultimately, to leverage and benefit from the design outputs. KISPE’s Open Source Satellite Programme is developing a robust, flexible satellite platform which addresses future market, mission and programmatic demands, leverages emerging technologies and is scalable for Nanosat to Microsatellite systems, enabling teams to utilise the platform as a low-cost “commodity” or infrastructure item on which to develop their specific mission