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PicoSats And CanSats And NEAR, Oh My
Snot Locker writes "As a followup to a SlashDot article posted last February, one of the picosats launched by students last year is still alive and well. Here is the article. What is even cooler is the link therein to the story on Coke-can satellites launched with amateur rockets!! My favorite CanSat story is at the end of the article where the prof caught the can before it landed." And we have the sad duty of reporting that NEAR won't be flying again after all. There's a great quote from one of the scientists about NEAR's current fuel level.
Arliss has been doing this for years now. I happened to be able to accompany a middle school to Black Rock, Nevada to do this in the summer of '99. The University Of Arazona was there, as well as 2 groups from Japan (Tokyo Institute of Technology and University Of Tokyo if I remember correctly).
The ARLISS group sent up three payloads, two temperature sensors (one a cricket chirp type sensor, one a radio wave signal back to a laptop hooked up to antennae) and a digital video camera. When a coke can is 30,000 ft above you, it's a tad hard to point the antenna's in the right direction, so we didn't have much luck. Our (as well as UOA's) focus was on sensors (I believe UOA had pressure sensors and velocity sensors in their cansats)
The Japanese teams worked on mobilization. They had a 2-can sat that was tethered together and climbed up and down the tether, keeping track of how many times it had climbed and descended.
All in all a good time was had by all. Being one of the two oldest kids on the trip was fun (no responsibilities of an adult, not doing kiddie stuff either... I ended up getting the dummy terminal up on the laptop though, that was fun). Besides, there was a planet of the apes marathon on the hotel TV... how much better could it get?
Since when did that stop anyone? I mean, c'mon, didn't we all used to build rocket launchers in the woods, even though it was a fire hazard, trying to clear the treetops and parachute down to the lake?
...
Nope?
Um, ok, then you all must be nice law-abiding drones. Go back to watching the XFL
Will in Seattle
Gee, maybe people were there millions of years ago! You know...our ancestors!
Ah, the media flexing its power of persuasion....
Three years ago, you could have gotten about $20 million in venture capital funding for that.
- Have a picture
I know NASA's new motto.. but come on.. hiring freshmen and using coke cans? Couldn't they at least use a tang can for nostalogia? ;)
the point is to get the experience of launching cheaply - it costs ~$400 (the AP cost) to put 3 cansats up and for that 3 university or school teams get to run their airframe thru the G forces of putting it up there and test their telemetry in a real-world environment - weather baloons are MORE expensive, less fun, harder to recover (they drift for miles on their way up) and don't provide the G shock on launch and deployment
Launching a rocket to 15,000 ft. is not terribly expensive. You can hit that for around $150 using commercially available high-power rockets.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
actually, he meant to say 'pounds.' ;)
Actually, 8 pounds of fuel would be quite a lot with gravity on Eros being what it is.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Special licensing is required when launching rockets with the higher engine ratings. I'm sure that guidance systems are also allowable through those licenses.
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NASA hasn't wasted any money on failed Mars expeditions, plus or minus several billion dollars...
Back when I was considering getting into model rockets, I remember reading that it was against US law to put any sort of guidance or guided payloads on amateur rockets. I know foreign spies have actually been arrested trying to infiltrate American rocket launching societies. So the question is how the hell did these guys get around the rules or did I just misread all those warnings?
Mir's coming down any day now.
from the article:
Is this the developer having a dig at Windows or a reference to the fact that the pico-sats are running Windows?
*** I am the real stylewagon
It'd also be pretty novel to shoot a rocket up my bum, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
--It's Pimptastic!--
I really don't think the purpose was to produce space-worthy sats, but to give undergraduate studends an opportunity to work hand's on with the technology. I don't think there are enough opportunities like this in our undergraduate programs.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
Yeah, but who would want a (very) warm coke?
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd better start looking for a carpentry job.
Finally a scientist admits that negative mass can and does exist "We have no fuel on board, plus or minus 8 kilograms," said one NEAR scientist.
"you know why? Because we got the bomb, thats why" -Dennis Leary
We know we're not putting them in orbit (we launch to 100k ft from the same site - and even 20 miles up aint LEO either :-) the idea is to get some really cheap experience at doing something real.
BTW they have an autonomous rover competition - same payload size as the usual 3 coke can deployment system - we drop it from 15k - you have to make it come back to a defined spot (it's on an almost flat playa so it's easier than you think - you do have to dodge the cars parked around the launch site :-)
Maybe the Heaven's gate cult survived after all.... Just landed on the wrong celestial object.
Shayne
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
They aren't satellites. Satellites enter orbit. The devices are little instrument packages that are launched on ballistic flight paths and then parachute back.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Also interesting, appears that even John Carmack has donated to the cause :)
(Good luck JP!)
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How can it be called a satellite if it just goes up 3 miles then parachutes back down? They'd be better off dropping them from weather baloons - they'd go higher, and it'd be cheaper to 'launch' them.
While I think it's a cool project, if it don't orbit - it just ain't a satellite..
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Oh my.
I can see someone in the ufo community going on about Nasa photos of alien footprints on the asteroid.
which is NOT what Nasa said.
I do not mind being entertained by the whackos on late night radio, but I can see this getting out of hand.
[sigh]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Jez,
:-)
you want to give these cans some hang time dump them out of a plane.
Satellite requires an orbit not a descent
'Slashdot, news for nerds. Stuff that matters.' What a joke!
It might be of some interest that the recent military space wargames actually included pico sattelites as a possible threat.
In this case though, the pico satellites, because of their relative ease of construction, were actually the red teams threat (red usually is the enemy to the united states, whearas the US is blue. In this case, a country like Iraq was the enemy).
In this case the sattelites would be used as small explosive devices, set into orbit to collide or come near a US sattelite, (communications or spy) and destroy it, cripling such systems as surveillance or GPS.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Well, the amateur rocket community is largely self-regulating. HPR vs amateur is a distinction that allows people to lauch big (100lbs+) rockets under hobbyist rules. This means commercial "hobbyist" motors (up to O class, i.e. 16000 Estee's A engines,) with only minor BATF and FAA involvement. Amateurs also launch rockets in this range, they just have different goals.
High power rockets use commercially available motors that are certified by a governing body. Amature rockets use motors designed by the person launching the rocket and require a lot more knowledge and money (not to mention time) to launch safely. It's a very expensive hobby whereas I could afford to do High Power rocketry while I had my forst job working 8 hours a week at Taco John's High power rockets generally don't go much higher than this, and amature rockets are much more expensive and involved (high explosives certification, etc.).
Much amateur rocket experimentation is concerned with relatively low powered motors. You try to get data with 1kg motors before you scale up to big stuff. NO rocketeers need high explosives permits (HE doesn't work for rockets.) A low explosives user permit is required... I have one, as do most serious HPR and amateur rocketeers. A LEUP lets you own/use up to 50K pounds of fuel: enough for any orbital shot.
I can't really see a college using amature rockets as a mandatory part of the curriculum.
There are many reasons to go immediately to amateur class rockets: liquid bi-prop and mono-prop rockets have a great bang for the buck; commercial HPR motors have sales restrictions that burden educational institutions; educational institutions get a free waiver from many of the Fire Code regs that affect hobbyists.
A quick run through a rocket sim package (e.g. Rocksim 4.0) shows that an HPR rocket cannot exceed 70k feet or so. Those of us that are thinking about orbit are immediately in the amateur category, but we run our tests in the HPR regime for as long as possible. The cost curve (other than time spent on the phone,) doesn't really jump at the HPR-amateur boundary though.)
Now we just need to convince Coke (with the threat of going to Pepsi) that this is worth the investment. Order it online, and in 15-20 minutes a can of coke will parachute onto your front lawn.
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.