Back in March I was visiting Glasgow, I was invited to the PocketQube workshop which is a conference supporting people building satellites even smaller than CubeSats. The smallest are 2 inch or 50millimeter cubes and they cost a lot less to launch than a traditional big CubeSat. And I was impressed to see demonstrations of deployable solar cells, attitude control, propulsion and even reentry at these scales. So what can you do with a spacecraft which is so small? Follow me on Twitter for more updates: https://twitter.com/DJSnM I have a discord server where I regularly turn up: https://discord.gg/zStmKbM If you really like what I do you can support me directly through Patreon https://www.patreon.com/scottmanley
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Is that a satellite in your pocket or are you just happy to see me
As someone who worked on a bunch of cubesats in college, they are both great fun and an absolute nightmare to develop and build. You get a small team with a lot of design authority but you are so so limited in what you want to do vs what is realistically possible. Rip my three children which were DoA when they got to orbit because of an EPS issue (maybe not actually certain cause, you know, they’re in space)
I want an FPV RC spacecraft. Looks like we're getting close
That pocket cubesat former reminds me of Ryanair's luggage allowance checker!
Measuring tape antenna! Omg. Genius. Holy crap, that solves a problem for me! (Dirt cheap, drone dropped co2 sensor)
Here’s hoping this’ll open up more amateur radio digital satellite opportunities.
Four inches???? More like 100mm cubed. Metric Scott!
Upvote to have scott manley visit all space conferences out there to tell us new cool things in spaaaaaace
Magnetorquers + reaction wheels are a powerful combo for nearly-free, propellant-less attitude control, which can even spin down from saturation. Almost seems impossible. It's impressive that they fit in that size of a package.
So happy to see nanosats getting more exposure! I've been working on a fully open source CubeSat bus for the last few years, and it's been the most fulfilling thing I've ever attempted. Maybe not quite as ambitious as what the madlads over at Alba Orbital are doing, but I hope it can become an accessible starting point for people who want to get into space. Thanks for the video!
Kessler?
"The sky is not the limit, you can go into orbit!"
14:12 POLAND MENTIONED!!!! AND ALSO AGH UNERVISITY!!!!!
Nguyen optics made some great videos on monolithic telescope lenses for pocketsats
"the sky is no longer the limit..." Scott Manley 2026
Huygens Optics made one of those a few years ago. They are very cool lenses.
5:55 many people could benefit from that extra inch.
I say we collectively crowdsource a personal 50 mm cubesat for Scott Manley, named "Scott Manley 1"!
5:00 that's less than I expected, tbh. That's like within the range of high end hobbies now
i wish Red Bull did a "cubesat race out of the solar system challenge" or something lol