Papers¶
Academic papers, technical articles and conference proceedings on CubeSats and small satellite systems – subsystem design, mission analysis, testing and flight results – and where to look for more.
The papers listed here are ones cited across this site's development pages, chosen because they are open access, empirically grounded, or both. Papers supporting only a single specific claim stay as footnotes on the page that uses them.
Where to look¶
- Small Satellite Conference Proceedings
Link– Utah State University's freely accessible archive of the premier small satellite conference, with proceedings going back to 1987. The single richest source of CubeSat engineering literature, and all of it open - NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)
Link– NASA's open archive of technical reports, conference papers and standards - arXiv
Link– Preprint server; CubeSat instrument and mission papers frequently appear here before or alongside journal publication
Reliability and statistics¶
- Towards the Thousandth CubeSat: A Statistical Overview
Link– Thyrso Villela et al., International Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 2019. Open access. Estimates CubeSat mission success at about 75% excluding launch failures, counting a mission as a success if it survived deployment and commissioning, and finds around 20% of failures occur during launch or deployment. Reports success rates increasing over time and data suggesting infant mortality is decreasing - Survey on the implementation and reliability of CubeSat electrical bus interfaces
Link– Jasper Bouwmeester, Martin Langer and Eberhard Gill, CEAS Space Journal 9(2), 163–173, 2017. Open access. Surveys 104 CubeSats, finds I²C the most implemented data bus and bus lockups a major in-orbit issue, with one confirmed catastrophic failure and two probable cases
Attitude determination and control¶
- Design and Numerical Validation of an Algorithm for the Detumbling and Angular Rate Determination of a CubeSat Using Only Three-Axis Magnetometer Data
Link– Stefano Carletta, Paolo Teofilatto and M. Salim Farissi, International Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 2018. Open access. Magnetometer-only detumbling reducing rotational kinetic energy by two orders of magnitude in under one orbit for a 3U with a 0.3 A·m² dipole limit - Attitude Analysis of Small Satellites Using Model-Based Simulation
Link– Samir A. Rawashdeh, International Journal of Aerospace Engineering, 2019. Open access. Describes the SNAP simulation tool and its modeling of gravity gradient, aerodynamic, magnetic and hysteresis damping torques on small satellites
Avionics and power¶
- PyCubed: An Open-Source, Radiation-Tested CubeSat Platform Programmable Entirely in Python
PDF– Maximillian Holliday et al., 33rd AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, SSC19-WKIII-04, 2019. A rare published example of a CubeSat team justifying COTS part selection with measured total ionizing dose test data. Free PDF - Degradation Modeling and Telemetry-Based Analysis of Solar Cells in LEO for Nano- and Pico-Satellites
Link– Yermek Amangeldi et al., Applied Sciences 15(16), 2025. Open access. On-orbit solar cell degradation rates by cell technology and altitude - Deep Learning-Based MPPT Approach to Enhance CubeSat Power Generation
Link– Abdulazez Abagero et al., IEEE Access 13, 40076–40089, 2025. Open access (CC BY 4.0). A deep-learning approach to maximum power point tracking for CubeSat solar arrays
Software and flight software¶
- The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety-Critical Code
PDF– Gerard J. Holzmann, IEEE Computer 39(6), 2006. Ten rules for safety-critical embedded code, every one checkable by static analysis. Short, and the origin of the no-dynamic-allocation and bounded-loop rules that most CubeSat coding standards inherit. Free PDF
Thermal, structures and testing¶
- SATMO: a Multi-Planet Thermal Analysis Tool for CubeSat Missions
Link– Alexander Chipps, Daniel Forgette and Kerri Cahoy, AIAA SciTech Forum 2026, DOI 10.2514/6.2026-2269. Describes an open-source six-node MATLAB thermal model validated against Thermal Desktop to within 1.17 °C. The AIAA version is paywalled; the arXiv preprint is open access. Open access preprint - Method for CubeSat Thermal-Vacuum Cycling Test Specification
PDF– Roy Stevenson Soler Chisabas et al., 47th International Conference on Environmental Systems, ICES-2017-102, 2017. Compares TVAC requirements across five major standards and proposes a tailoring method. Free PDF - Introduction to On-Orbit Thermal Environments
PDF– Steven L. Rickman, NASA Engineering and Safety Center, TFAWS 2014. How measured albedo and outgoing longwave radiation distributions become hot and cold design cases. Free PDF
Communications and antennas¶
- Antennas for CubeSat Communication
PDF– Miroslav Veljovic, EPFL doctoral thesis no. 7489, 2020, DOI 10.5075/epfl-thesis-7489 (Infoscience record). Book-length treatment of CubeSat antenna design and the integration constraints that shape it. Open access
Payload and instruments¶
- A compact instrument for gamma-ray burst detection on a CubeSat platform I: Design drivers and expected performance
Link– David Murphy et al., Experimental Astronomy 52(1–2), 59–84, 2021. Companion to paper II below: the science case and sizing behind GMOD, with Monte Carlo estimates giving a sky-average effective area of 10 cm² at 120 keV and 11–14 gamma-ray bursts detected at high significance over a one-year mission. Open access - A compact instrument for gamma-ray burst detection on a CubeSat platform II: Detailed design, assembly and validation
Link– David Murphy et al., Experimental Astronomy 53(3), 961–990, 2022. Detailed design, calibration and validation of a well-documented CubeSat science instrument. Open access
Found a paper that belongs here? Please contribute.