Shoebox-sized satellite enters orbit packing 3Mbps radio

Sounds like it can only talk to other shoeboxes but can listen to anything. Not much use to the ZuckerBorg then for pumping ads to the 3rd world.

The reason it "more closely resembles a shoebox than a cube" is because it's a 3U Cubesat.

i.e. it's three cube units joined together. Funcube-1 (AO-73) is an example of a 1U Cubesat that is actually cubic, and has been orbiting for years.

This is really basic stuff.

Also remember that the speed of development is due to simply bolting together off-the-shelf cubesat bits and not having to design for long life and no single-point-of-failure (since its so cheap, and then they don't care if it fails soon).

The long term consequences of a vast number of short-lived and then (or even by design) uncontrollable small satellites is a serious one. Really, those things should only ever be put in a very low orbit so they will de-orbit all by themselves in a couple of years at most.

Lots of small, cheap, satellites that offer functionality comparable to bigger birds

Not quite.

Moving to a small satellite does not increase the potential density of satellites in geostationary orbit. So it all depends on what kind of comms satellites are we talking about.

Lower altitude "broadband swarm" - maybe. That idea has seen an on-off interest for the last 15 years. In reality, nobody has managed to make it work commercially for Joe Average user. Sure - it is used for ship, plane, etc telemetry, but that does not drive the bandwidth demand very much. The current Inmarsat deployment can service the demand and there are very few drivers to increase it.

Geostationary tv and comms - not really. If you have a single space in the lineup, you might as well put a 10+ years lifespan monster there to make the most of it.

Reaction wheels work fine until they accumulate too much speed. You have to dump the momentum somehow, usually needing propellant to do so.

They had better get that de-orbit sail working before they send up lots of these - once Kessler syndrome is triggered it's too late to do much about it.

The SDR radio is the best component on that.

Not only does it mean that the radio can be re-programmed (over a designed range, but still better than nothing), it means that it can receive all those signals simultaneously. It doesn't have to worry about separate paths and interference, only that the antenna are capable of reception, and then it can analyse all those signals at the same time on the same device.

Obviously there are limits to the processing power but this means that listening out for a new band, or even slowly transitioning from one band to another, are no big deal providing you have the processing capacity. You can just add the new band, while receiving the old, then retire the old when you're sure the signal ratios are enough and it works as you expect.

If only the old GPS satellites had this - we could have made them transmit something more than just GPS NMEA and tie in with the new positioning networks without having to have the receivers all have quad-band receivers and processing in the mean-time.

Let me be the first...

... to welcome our shoebox-sized Borg collective overlords.

What is it for?

As title. Article explains what it can do but why is it up there? Presumably even small satellites are not cheap.

Size isn't everything

Why has nobody before thought of bunging a bloody big spring on the back? Must be a darn sight cheaper than launching with a polluting expensive and unstable rocket?