Fairfax, Virginia

A warehouse manager in the sky, this solar-powered "nanosatellite" will soon be one of 64 keeping a close watch on shipping containers, fishing fleets and possibly even individual UPS and FedEx packages as they travel between continents. Much cheaper to produce and launch than today's multiton communications satellites, each 15-pound nanosat contains a transmission receiver, transmitter and microprocessor technology. What really makes nanosats special, however, is their extremely low orbit. As opposed to conventional satellites, which orbit at an average altitude of 24,000 miles, the nanosats will spin around the globe barely 600 miles above the earth's surface. Because of this low altitude, communication with the satellites requires much less power and a much smaller antenna than needed to communicate with the high-altitude satellites.
So instead of the large-dish antennas and power-hungry transmitters that current tracking systems require, nanosats can communicate with battery-powered tracking devices the size of cigarette boxes, which can be placed on virtually anything worth tracking. The nanosat "tags" have a built-in GPS system that transmits their location to the nanosat in the sky, which in turn relays the data back to earth. Sensors on the tags can also be designed to monitor a container's temperature or to prevent tampering, creating a detailed handling record in case of a damage. With 64 redundant satellites orbiting the earth, inventors Dino Lorenzini and Mark Kanawati (above) of SpaceQuest, Ltd. say their system will be far more reliable than even the best satellites today. " What happens to your customers when the $200 million conventional satellite you spent three years to build blows up on the launchpad?" Kanawati asks. "If that were to happen to one of ours, we would still have another 63 up there."