• Development testing of cutting edge technologies, methods and software-hardware solutions
• Educational programs
• Environmental monitoring
• Geophysical fields surveys

Miniature spacecraft advantages, by virtue of absence of numerous complex parts, include: high production efficiency, short production time, low cost and relative ease of orbital deployment. That's why in the future heavy satellites costing hundreds of millions Euros, taking up to a decade to design and manufacture, will be replaced by small and miniature spacecrafts.

Today, though, they are considered inexpensive platforms for scientific experiments and research in space and microgravity.

Nanosatellites' hardware constraints include small payload capacity and short service life. In addition, their small size does not permit installation of powerful receivers, transmitters and additional load, forcing to select a "specialization" for each one.

First Russian nanosatellite is technological nanosatellite TNS-0 No. 1 (5.0 kg mass, 170 mm diameter, 550 mm length) developed by ОАО "Rossiyskie kosmicheskie sistemy". It was manually launched by Russian cosmonaut Salimzhan Sharipov at 11:30:15 MSD on 28 march, 2005 from ISS during EVA.

TNS-0 No. 1 was designed to perform development testing in real spaceflight conditions of new spacecraft control technologies, Earth's remote sensing and miniature onboard units and devices.

One of its primary goals was testing the possibility of Globalstar satellite communication use for spacecraft control. Modem installed on the nanosatellite was used for data exchange between TNS-0 No. 1 and the mission control center (MCC). Measurement and supporting data was transmitted from the satellite to the Earth, while command and program data was transmitted from the Earth to the satellite. Developers managed to design a control unit consisting of just two devices: a notebook acting as a MCC and a cellular phone used as a communication terminal.