Reliability & failure statistics

Also known as Infant mortality, Dead on arrival, PocketQube census

Empirical survival rates, dead-on-arrival root causes (EPS, antenna release, unknown TLE) and lessons from the 2013–2025 PocketQube census.

Document
SQ-EN-006
Updated
21 Oct 2026
Reading time
1 min
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Lessons from CubeSat and PocketQube flight records#

Historical surveys of university and commercial CubeSats by Swartwout[1] and Langer & Bouwmeester[2] showed that roughly of first-time university nanosatellites either failed to separate or were never heard from on orbit ("dead on arrival", DOA). In the census of PocketQubes[3], outcome statistics depend strongly on deployment route and pre-launch end-to-end testing[4].

PocketQubes launched in 2013–2025 by size (n = 93)
SizeUnitsShare
1P3133%
2P2325%
3P2325%
1.5P1314%
2.5P22%
6P11%
Total93100%

nadir lab. PocketQube census (Appendix A): every PocketQube launched in 2013–2025, launch failures included; one row per spacecraft.

References

  1. [1]Swartwout, M. (2013). The first one hundred CubeSats: a statistical look. Journal of Small Satellites, 2, 213–233.
  2. [2]Langer, M., & Bouwmeester, J. (2016). Reliability of CubeSats — statistical data, developers’ beliefs and the way forward. In: 30th Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites (SSC16-X-2).
  3. [3]nadir lab. (2026). PocketQube picosatellites: A review of standards, mission trends and miniaturization constraints, with lessons learned from Grizu-263A, Türkiye’s first PocketQube [Preprint]. nadir lab.Read on nadir lab.
  4. [4]Idriss, M. I., & Ismail, N. A. (2025). The rise of PocketQube: an in-depth look at mission trends and attitude determination and control systems technologies [Preprint]. TechRxiv.doi:10.36227/techrxiv.175393444.46626282
  5. [5]European Cooperation for Space Standardization. (2022). ECSS-E-ST-10-03C Rev.1: Space engineering — Testing. ESA Requirements and Standards Section.ecss.nl(accessed 20 October 2026)

Cite this SatWiki entry

@misc{nadirlab2026reliability,
  author       = {{nadir lab.}},
  title        = {{Reliability \& failure statistics}},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  howpublished = {nadir lab. SatWiki SQ-EN-006 (Rev. 1)},
  url          = {https://nadirlab.space/en/wiki/reliability-failure-statistics/}
}