## 2 Background
### Small Satellite Engineering  
Some would argue that small spacecraft have their foundations in the earliest launches. Sputnik is pointed to, by some, as an example of a small satellite. [PERSON], for example, describes it as being the \"size of a beach ball\" and weighing \"a mere 184 pounds\" [1]. Thinking of something this size as small is not unsurprising, considering the size of many current and historical spacecraft. Intelsat 10, a communications satellite launched in 2004, had an initial launch mass of 5,600 kg [2]. In 2000, [PERSON] (then at Stanford leading the Satellite Quick Research Testbed project) changed the notion of the size of a small satellite [3]. The Orbiting Picosatellite Automatic Launcher (OPAL) deployed six \"hockey puck-sized\" spacecraft, weighing 1 kg [3]. Following this success, [PERSON] and [PERSON] developed specifications for the CubeSat form factor and developed the commonly used launcher, the Poly-PicoSatellite Orbital Deployed (P-POD). The first CubeSat was launched in 2003. To-date, more than 60 CubeSats have successfully reached orbit [4]; numerousothers have been developed and lost to launch failures or never launched [5]. [PERSON] is now working on making small satellites even smaller via working on a satellite one-eighth the volume of a CubeSat (5 cm \(\times\) 5 cm \(\times\) 5 cm) called the PocketQub [3]. This spacecraft is targeted at enhancing high school STEM education. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [6] proffer that \"most university satellite programs have focused more on their educational missions\" than on advancing science and science and engineering techniques. Several examples of science missions exist, however, including the University of Illinois ION-1 (oxygen airglow photometer) and ION-2 (neutral hydrogen photometer) spacecraft and Taylor University's TEST (Langmuir plasma probe, electric field boom, VLF receiver, SSD spectrometer and transient photometer) and TU SAT-1 (Langmuir plasma probe, tether and Nitol tether). [PERSON] [7] proffered, in 2004, that \"university-class satellites\" can be \"disruptive\" research platforms: they can alter the way that space research is carried out (though the veracity of these claims have been reduced somewhat in later work). It is asserted that this disruptive capability comes from the particular strengths of research universities: students' enthusiasm and novel ideas and the \"freedom to fail\" [7]. In 2012, [PERSON] [8] noted that university programs have moved away from being \"beepsats\", a term used to characterize spacecraft lacking \"a compelling science, technology or communications payload\" to incorporating real scientific, engineering or other goals. These missions, he noted (in 1997), should have risk from their unique characteristics and not be an exercise in navigating complexity [9]. A university program, under these circumstances, can be beneficial to students' educational attainment and investigate \"risky and/or innovative methods\" [9]. University missions can and do employ the same mission analysis and design techniques [10-12] utilized by industry, military and government. [PERSON], _et al._[13] differ that the standardization in the CubeSat development community is critical to the form factor's success; this of course is atypical for space missions which (while reusing proven/qualified components) generally implement mission or program-specific designs. CubeSats are also pushing technical boundaries. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [14] provide an overview. CubeSats are using (and in some cases being used to test) advances such as: plastic printed structures, deployable solar panels and technologies (such as Stanford's Hemispherical Anti-Twist Tracking System, HATTS [15]), advanced propulsion (e.g., heated Freon gas) and 3D printed propulsion. [PERSON] [16], however, highlights two key problems: spacecraft projects are not responsive to university needs of creating a sustained educational program or attracting external research sponsorship.