CubeSat interior

At the Naval Postgraduate School's Space Systems department, researchers are hard at work coming up with new ways to use the small satellites known as CubeSats.

A CubeSat has a standard dimension. A 1U CubeSat is 10 cubic centimeters, and they come in 1U, 2U, and 3U sizes. Each picosatellite can have a wide variety of different kinds of technologies and sensors installed inside its small metal frame. They are then loaded into a special box called a Cal Poly P-POD, which is spring loaded so that when it is released from a larger container in space, it can launch the satellite.

This is a look inside a CubeSat that will have a special solar installed on its top so that researchers can evaluate how long the cells will last in space.