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NinjaMoreLikeANonja OP t1_jd5fe1c wrote

Reply to comment by Doomenor in Hi! I am the Chief Engineer of SBUDNIC, a 3U cubesat which is deorbiting itself via drag sail, AMA! by NinjaMoreLikeANonja

There is actually atmosphere in space! The atmosphere never really ends, it just kinda slowly gets less and less dense. Technically, there's Earth atmosphere on the Moon, but it's just suuuuuuuuuper duuuuuuper basically-not-really-there. Also, the Sun spews hot space gasses at us constantly so there's drag from that too.

At 550km where SBUDNIC was initially deployed, there's very very little but- over the course of thousands of orbits- the drag adds up! It takes a long time.

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NinjaMoreLikeANonja OP t1_jd5fmii wrote

Also, cube because cubes pack nicely. Small satellites are generally all described in matters of size as a multiple of 1U, which is a 10cm cube. So a 3U, like SBUDNIC, is 30x10x10cm.

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