2014 - The Commerce of Small Satellites

Opportunity, demand, and emerging markets have sparked the imagination of entrepreneurs seeking to capitalize on the reality of small satellites to develop new businesses or government services. Supporting these exciting endeavors is increasingly available investment funding from many sources such as high-tech venture capital firms, angel investors, and even crowd-sourcing. These new funding sources have allowed innovative companies, government administrators, and researchers from within the small satellite community to aggressively pursue diverse concepts such as providing low-cost remote sensing data products at unprecedented revisit rates, prospecting near-Earth asteroids for precious mineral deposits, and manifesting novel sensors as hosted payloads. During the 28th year of the AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites we look to learn more about these exciting entrepreneurial endeavors that are enabled by small satellites, including the technical and business challenges of this new era.