Cubesat Planet-Finder In The Works

"A $5 million cubesat is definitely top of
the line, but not when it is being developed
to perform work similar to that underway
on the $600 million Kepler planet-finder
mission.

A group at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) is developing a cubesat
dubbed ExoplanetSat to evaluate whether
any Earthlike planets found circling bright,
relatively nearby stars have orbits that would
permit spectral analysis of their
atmospheres."

See:

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article....p41-478903.xml