ThumbSat

ThumbSat, Inc. is a US small-satellite access-to-space company that lets schools, universities, research groups, artists and individual experimenters fly hardware in low Earth orbit without building or licensing an entire spacecraft. Its core product, the ThumbSat, is a femtosatellite-class hosted-payload module roughly 48x48x(15-32)mm and up to 25g, built around a shared bus that supplies power, a camera, GPS, flash memory and a 400MHz radio link, with customer experiments integrated directly onto the shared structure. ThumbSat handles the regulatory paperwork, satellite build, launch integration and post-launch data return, compressing a process that traditionally costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and takes years down to a package starting at roughly $20,000 with results in weeks.

The company's engineering and manufacturing work is coordinated across a distributed team, with satellite integration and testing carried out at a Tijuana, Mexico facility, and launches procured through partners such as CAS Space, flying on vehicles including the Lijian-1 rocket from Jiuquan, China. Its most recent orbital mission, TS1/TS2, launched in August 2025 carrying two sub-100g ThumbSat femtosatellites, including a mirror-selfie payload and an artistic payload, and was tracked from first signal acquisition by a distributed volunteer ground network.

Supporting the satellites is ThumbNet, ThumbSat's global network of low-cost, internet-connected 400MHz ground stations built and operated largely by students, educators and citizen scientists using ThumbNet SDR receivers (including the N3 USB dongle) and 3D-printable automated antenna trackers. ThumbNet lets ground station operators receive, decode and share live mission data, turning every ThumbSat launch into a hands-on STEAM education and citizen-science exercise as well as a commercial payload-hosting mission.