Interplanetary & Deep-Space CubeSats (MarCO, LICIACube, CAPSTONE, Milani & Juventas)

Telecommunications at 1 AU, cold-gas momentum desaturation outside Earth’s magnetosphere, reflectarray high-gain antennas, and autonomous optical navigation on 6U and 12U deep-space CubeSats.

Document
SQ-MSN-011
Updated
22 Oct 2026
Reading time
1 min
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Engineering Challenges Beyond Low Earth Orbit#

Taking a 6U or 12U CubeSat beyond cis-lunar space removes two foundational crutches of nanosatellites: Earth’s geomagnetic field (rendering useless for reaction-wheel desaturation) and short 500–1,500 km slant ranges[1][2]. At 1 AU (), free-space path loss increases by relative to LEO, requiring high-gain X-band reflectarrays and NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) 34 m / 70 m antennas[3][4].

References

  1. [1]NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (2019). The MarCO mission comes to an end.jpl.nasa.gov
  2. [2]The CubeSat Program, Cal Poly SLO. (2022). CubeSat Design Specification, Rev. 14.1 (CP-CDS-R14.1). California Polytechnic State University.nasa.gov
  3. [3]NASA Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute. (2026). State-of-the-Art of Small Spacecraft Technology (2026 edition). NASA Ames Research Center.nasa.gov(accessed 20 October 2026)
  4. [4]Wertz, J. R., Everett, D. F., & Puschell, J. J. (Eds.). (2011). Space Mission Engineering: The New SMAD. Microcosm Press.

Cite this SatWiki entry

@misc{nadirlab2026deep,
  author       = {{nadir lab.}},
  title        = {{Interplanetary \& Deep-Space CubeSats (MarCO, LICIACube, CAPSTONE, Milani \& Juventas)}},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  howpublished = {nadir lab. SatWiki SQ-MSN-011 (Rev. 1)},
  url          = {https://nadirlab.space/en/wiki/deep-space-cubesats/}
}