Introduction

Since the beginning of the new millennium, the whole aerospace community has evolved rapidly into a new era by revolutionized small satellite technologies [1–3]. Traditionally, satellites were rather complex, heavy, bulk, and also expensive. Benefiting from the increasing availability of advanced hardware and technologies, satellites now can be made with much smaller size in the order of centimeters and much less weight of only a few kilograms. These small satellites are often classified according to their weights, i.e., mini (100–500 kg), micro (10–100 kg), nano (1–10 kg), pico (0.1–1 kg), and femto (<0.1 kg) [3]. A well-known type of small satellite is called CubeSat, which is made of several units with the fundamental size of 10 \(\times \) 10 \(\times \) 10 \(\textrm{cm}^3\) cube (1U). For their low size and weight, small satellites have attracted not only traditional institutional players such as governments, universities, and space agencies but also intensive investment from private companies.