Small Satellites and Silly Nomenclature
Sadly, the nomenclature for small satellites misappropriates the "three orders of magnitude" metric prefixes, like so:
microsatellite |
10 to 100 kg |
|
nanosatellite |
1 to 10 kg |
1U to 6U cubesats |
picosatellite |
0.1 to 1 kg |
|
femtosatellite |
10 to 100 grams |
extending this nomenclature:
giga-yotta-yottasatellite |
10 to 100 exatonnes |
73 exatonne Moon of Earth |
|
|
|
gigasatellite |
1 to 10 kilotonnes |
2030 tonne Space Shuttle launch stack |
megasatellite |
100 to 1000 tonne |
420 tonne International Space Station |
kilosatellite |
10 to 100 tonne |
94 tonne Space Shuttle orbiter with full payload |
unisatellite |
1 to 10 tonne |
5.9 tonne Boeing 702HP comsat |
millisatellite |
0.1 to 1 tonne |
|
microsatellite |
10 to 100 kg |
|
nanosatellite |
1 to 10 kg |
|
picosatellite |
0.1 to 1 kg |
|
femtosatellite |
10 to 100 grams |
|
attosatellite |
1 to 10 grams |
5g server sky |
milli-yoctosatellite |
1 to 10 milligrams |
3 milligram thinned integrated circuit die |