Picosats Successful

Jett writes, "MSNBC has an article about the picosats that were launched back in January. The picosats are the smallest satellites ever put into space. About the size of a cell phone, they were launched to prove their effectiveness. According to the article the mission was a success and picosats will probably be replacing the big satellites we currently have in orbit." Nice little "space wrapup" story.

Comments

Do small Sats mean bigger dishes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Small satellites mean weak signals. They mentioned in the article how hard they were to find.

Green Peace will call it dish pollution.
Who cares. GIMME BANDWIDTH! ;^P

Random Thoughts

[Dolohov]

First thought: This is really nifty. Think scope here. If these things are so cheap, what's to prevent us from stringing them around the moon or Mars? A handful of these could in time be just as powerful as a large-scale satellite.

Second thought: What's to prevent the random linking and de-linking of these things as needed? Electromagnets, perhaps, powered by solar cells, could provide enough impetus to move by, say, "swimming" through ferromagnetic debris that's already clouding the Earth's upper upper atmosphere.

Third thought: The more of these we send up, the more shooting stars we'll see when they re-enter and burn. Sounds cool to me.

Last thought: Apparently, the government now has the ability to track a cell-phone type signal from a hundred or so miles away, with enough accuracy to communicate / monitor the device. This makes me slightly unhappy.

Re:Random Thoughts

[Audin]

First thought: This is really nifty. Think scope here. If these things are so cheap, what's to prevent us from stringing them around the moon or Mars? A handful of these could in time be just as powerful as a large-scale satellite.

They'll always have a few limitations, though: small power generation capabilites (nuclear might help, though), and small antennas (so limiting them to really high frequencies)... There is also the serious problem of cooling, getting rid of excess heat is very difficult in space.

Second thought: What's to prevent the random linking and de-linking of these things as needed? Electromagnets, perhaps, powered by solar cells, could provide enough impetus to move by, say, "swimming" through ferromagnetic debris that's already clouding the Earth's upper upper atmosphere.

Magnetic fields are already used for orientation purposes. It's called magtorquing or something like that. The generated magnetic field acts against the earths own magnetic field. You can't really move around using such a system, though. Some of the nano/micro thruster work might do the job, though. These are thrusters built using IC technology...extremely small.

Third thought: The more of these we send up, the more shooting stars we'll see when they re-enter and burn. Sounds cool to me.

Reentering is bad. It just means we've wasted a valuable in-orbit resource. Given our ridiculously high launch costs, any mass in orbit is worth more than it's weight in gold.

Apparently, the government now has the ability to track a cell-phone type signal from a hundred or so miles away, with enough accuracy to communicate / monitor the device. This makes me slightly unhappy.

Given the huge size of some of the antennas used on signals intelligence satellites, I wouldn't doubt for a minute that a cellphone could be a feasible target. (The question, of course, is if the antennas are big enough to focus on just one cell region...) Some of these sats have antennas over 100 meters in diameter...

Re:Random Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Third thought: The more of these we send up, the more shooting stars we'll see when they re-enter and burn. Sounds cool to me.

Probably not. An object the size of a cell phone or videocassette isn't likely to produce a shooting star visible from the surface.

Way cool, but article's not exactly complete.

[anuj]

The article was well writeen and blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't mention where the sattelites were made .. nor who made them...
They were made by an all-female engineering team at the Santa Clara Univ, CA, as a senior design project (i'm pretty sure). What's more, one of 'em's the TA for a course I'm takin' there.
(Hiya there if you're reading this.. it's 2:40am Monday night/Tue Morn, and I'm still puzzling out that dang prelab for tomorrow.. aaaagh)
Ah well
UltraWarm Regards,
Anuj_Himself