Most cubesats, other smallsats, and small probes are designed, funded, and launched by small teams (often associated with education/research institutions) at the smallest.
By "auteur", I mean a concept similar to the concept in the world of film: A single private person who plans (and often funds) the enterprise and has a very high (not necessarily absolute) level of personal control over goals, design, sanctioning, mission plan, and other aspects of a mission.
With the cost of launching a cubesat at maybe $200K USD and plenty of rich people in the world, one might expect some of this kind of space mission to have been run.
(I am not expecting every bit of work to have been done by the auteur, let alone building/operating the launch vehicle. They might contract out a lot of stuff. The point is that it's a mission that's a single person's domain rather than a collaborative effort with multiple stakeholders.)
Are there any satellites or probes that have been launched by "auteurs" according to this defiinition?
