Fifty years ago space exploration was the domain of governments. With no off-the-shelf technology or experience, everything had to be invented from scratch at substantial risk.
After the end of the ‘Space Race’ the charge skyward was taken up by commercial entities who were able to re-purpose proven cold war technologies and profit from the telecommunications boom.
Recently things have changed again. We’re now seeing the emergence of platform technologies such as cube sats, additive manufacturing and low-cost micro controllers that are further driving down the cost of space exploration, finally allowing anybody to conceive and launch their own space program.
Hence, the birth of citizen science projects. Moonshots by the average motivated citizen science team.
