- CubeSat
6U CubeSat
6U CubeSat
With more than 50 CubeSats launched, Blue Canyon’s XB line is reliable, high-performing and flight proven, providing a highly accurate, turnkey solution for your next mission.
Class
6U
Available Payload Volume
4U (typical)
Pointing Accuracy
±0.002° (1-sigma), 3 axes, 2 Trackers
Orbit Altitude / Orbit Lifetime
LEO (> 5 years), GEO (> 2 years), Deep Space (> 2 years)
Real-World Missions
Proven Heritage
Units Launched
34
Units In-Work
20
Our agile CubeSat technology is enabling the NASA Ames Starling mission to demonstrate autonomous cooperation, without the need for real-time updates from mission control. This “swarm” technology is critical to future deep space missions, where highly autonomous spacecraft will be indispensable.
Furthermore, the upcoming SPARCS mission intends to use a 6U CubeSat – roughly the size of a cereal box – to study the high-energy environments of exoplanets around distant stars, performing ultraviolet astrophysics research that can only be done now with the multi-billion-dollar, monolithic spacecraft Hubble. However, with Blue Canyon’s pointing accuracy and low-jitter reaction wheels, these types of small but powerful missions are now much more affordable.
6U CubeSat
Missions
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AGILE MICROSATELLITE (AMS)
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Objective:First-of-its-kind mission that demonstrated that a CubeSat can positively control attitude in very low Earth orbit.
BCT Provided:XB6 CubeSat bus, Mission Operations
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ARCSTONE
NASA Langley Research Center
Objective:Provide accurate measurements of lunar spectral reflectance to significantly improve lunar calibrations standard.
BCT Provided:XB6 CubeSat bus, System Integration and Test, Spacecraft Operations
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CIRCE
US Naval Research Laboratory and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory UK
Objective:CubeSats flying in tandem formation in low-Earth orbit to measure the ionosphere and radiation environment space from multiple vantage points.
BCT Provided:Two XB6 CubeSat bus, Mission Operations
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AGILE MICROSATELLITE (AMS)
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Objective:First-of-its-kind mission that demonstrated that a CubeSat can positively control attitude in very low Earth orbit.
BCT Provided:XB6 CubeSat bus, Mission Operations
