Want Your Own Personal Satellite? Reaching Space Is Becoming (Relatively) Cheap

Maybe one day, kids will get femtosat DIY kits -- and access to the universe -- for their birthdays.
3DSculptor via Getty Images

Satellites are shrinking, and so is the cost to build them and shoot them up into orbit.

Cubesats, which weigh 1.33 kilograms or less, have become popular for researchers with grants and federal agencies like NASA. But their price, while lower than clunky old-school satellites, has remained out of reach for those who can’t pay a mortgage’s worth of money and don’t know how to hitch a ride on a rocket. Enter picosats and femtosats, Cubesats’s smaller, cheaper siblingsand the companies that will help you send them to space.

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