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.

Comments

Pico Sattelites Inspiration for Military

[deft]

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.

Re:Coke can sattelites are a joke

[Gorobei]

Well, This was reported incorrectly. These aren't amature rockets, they're High Power rockets. The difference is like the one between hackers and crackers. Anyone outside the community can't tell/ doesn't care about the difference.

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.)

Sweetness

[KurdtX]

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