CubeSats: main characteristics and orbits

Over the past 25 years, CubeSats have accounted for nearly 15 % of all spacecraft launched into orbit. To support a comprehensive review of existing CubeSat missions and to enable the use of related data for planning and developing future missions, a unified and easily accessible information source is required. This paper presents a new open-access Russian-language database of CubeSats, which compiles information on their principal design characteristics as well as both current and historical orbital parameters. A classification scheme is presented that organizes CubeSats by family, structural design, and mission purpose. The study uses data current as of autumn 2025 for 2,783 CubeSats, which, according to the proposed classification, are grouped into 896 families, 129 models, six functional classes, and five application domains. The work also describes the possible deployment methods, which are divided into two categories: deployment from the ISS or deployment from other launch or carrier systems. The most common orbital classes for CubeSats are identified, namely Sun-synchronous orbits and ISS-inclination orbits.