You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, Shortwave reporter Emily Quang here, occasional backup host, when Maddie is out on the

volleyball circuit.

I have science correspondent, Joe Palco with me today, to talk about satellites.

But not just any satellites, a special nano satellite called a CubeSat.

Yup, it's a tiny satellite.

It's about the size of a standard-sized Rubik's Cube, and you can join them together to make

larger CubeSats if that's what you have in mind.

You can make them all the way up to about the size of a family-sized box of Cheerios, as

someone described it to me.

First of all, love Cheerios.

So much deliciousness in such a tiny package.

And second, a CubeSat sounds pretty small for something that has to operate in space.

These are satellites, right?

Yes, and in the past, they were fairly limited, and they were kind of things that you could

maybe try this or try that, but they were sort of throwaways.

And suddenly in the last, maybe five, six, seven years, maybe even longer than that now,

gotten very sophisticated.

And they've also been going into deep space, which is what's really got me amused.

Wow.

Okay, so today we're going to meet some scientists who are doing cool things with CubeSats.

And we'll talk about how these tiny satellites are starting to play a big part in exploring

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