The satellite is purely a technology demonstrator designed by NICT intended to help AES company to gain experience in basic mission control, attitude control and spacecraft communications.

[2] All subsystems of spacecraft are powered by solar cells mounted on spacecraft body and stub wings, with estimated electrical power of 120W BOL degrading to 100W EOL.

[2][3][4] SOTA was the first lasercom on board a microsatellite, performing a variety of experiments in a less-than-6 kg compact package, being the main one the 10 Mbit/s links at 1549 nm using coarse and fine-pointing to accurately transmit the 35-mW laser through a 5-cm Cassegrain telescope.

[5] SOTA had other additional capabilities, i.e. B92-like QKD protocol at 800-nm band to perform the first-time quantum-limited demonstration from space.

[6] SOCRATES was launched from Tanegashima, Japan, on 24 May 2014 at 03:05:00 UTC by an H-IIA 202.