German Orbital Systems

For some time now, the trend in satellite manufacturing has been toward miniaturization. Many of the satellites launched today are the size of a shoebox. A standard unit of a CubeSat measures just 10 x 10 x 10 cm. This reduction in size not only places new demands on the power supply, but also on the communications capability. ESA has now commissioned a consortium led by Dcubed to develop a deployable antenna array.