The groundswell of cubesat projects underway at universities, government labs and private companies worldwide promises to generate more data than the ad hoc communications systems originally devised for the tiny birds can handle. But just as the former graduate students who pioneered cubesats a couple of decades ago are finding ways to advance their small-space technology as entrepreneurs, teachers and corporate engineers (see p. 37), the community is starting to grapple with the flow of data expected to be generated as short-lived cubesats give way to swarms of tiny spacecraft carrying cameras, telescopes and other high-data sensors.
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