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Telemetry Made Simple: Rocket Phone Home
UserID 3.14 writes "This article from science daily talks about a communications module that will be strapped to the rockets of a shuttle or other payload delivery vehicle. It can be used to provide constant telemetry by making a cell phone call using the Globalstar Network. Does this mean that if you use a cell phone in space, even there people will ask you to step outside?" See NASA's web page about the Flight Modem, which seems to be very much a work in progress
What it means is that all geeks will be banned from the flight, because they use up too much bandwidth. :)
"We've got to call Mission Control about..."
"No way dude, I just got another frag; yes!"
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Just so long as they don't try to WAP-enable the launch vehicles, I think we'll be juuust fine...
Who is correct? At this point, it's difficult to tell. Some detractors would argue that this technology presents an undue intrusion into existing social models. Cell-phone and other long distance communication technology is a revolutionary alterance in the existing capacity of communication; it alters the capacity for travel, communication, and intellectual exchange in ways that our current economic structure and techonological understanding may not be prepared to accomodate. Perhaps glitches in this untested process may condemn cell phones to a footnote in our history.
Supporters, on the other hand, say that these kind of cell phones an important step forward for communications and society. With previous types of cell-phones, not all users could not take advantage of the most important technological benefits gained from modern-day research. Telemetry, they say, opens the proverbial floodgates by bringing this technology out of the laboratories and into the homes of the every-day user.
There is some probably some merit to both viewpoints. Certainly, society as a whole will encounter some friction as it shifts to accomodate the mobility capacity and access provided by cell phones. However, the end result may be worth the infrastructural shifts; existing insular communities may not be as structurally capable as their newer cousin.
Will telemetry sink or swim? The question is still up in the air; with many unique forces and viewpoints at work, we'll likely see many interesting challenges and confrontations for the pioneers in the telecommuncations field. Whatever the final result is, it's sure to give the key players on all sides of the issue a trial by fire.
Yu Suzuki
Yu Suzuki
Deamcast. It's thinking.
I have to wonder if this is really going to be used by NASA for a few reasons well mainly, if you look at the timeline ont he NASA homepage, its about 6 years, and we all know how fast technology changes. 6 years before this is even used? Or did I misread it? Anyways it seems like a cost effective idea but I wonder if anyone knows of more specs on this, e.g.:
GPS receiver; potential other sensors (e.g., accelerometers)
Internet protocol (IP) communications and software tools
GPS is readily available already so unless they're banking on some new hyper technical version, why was this listed? IP communications and software tools... Anyone know of any information on software of specs of the IP side of things, IPv6, v4, what? Also if this comes into play I wonder what will companies like Cisco, and Juniper do in order to capture this market, anyone with links to information like that? It'd be some neat Sunday night reading.
360 degrees of Karma
"Hey, it looks like booster rocket #4 made $500 worth of calls to a 900 line..."
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If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget 'em, because man, they're gone. -- Jack
But seriously, this could be very interesting. I am guessing that this means that anyone who gets the number would also be able to call the astronauts on the shuttle ... unless of course our government is smart enough to block such a thing. (Hmm. Wait a second. DAMN!) It was worth a thought, though. Is there anything that the government doesn't control, here? Com'on. THINK! :)
"Does this mean that if you use a cell phone in space, even there people will ask you to step outside?"
Bah. Pointless and corny - I would have taken it out of the article.
No, because in space, no one can hear your cell phone calls.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I regularly participate in amateur rocket competitions. For telemetry I find it quite simple to attach a Nokia 5100 (with detached Honey Orange faceplate) and wire it to a microprocessor that will send varying volumes in different audible frequency bands to indicate different values, scaled into audible ranges. For example, altitude, airspeed, latitude and longitude (as calculated by GPS and communicated to the uP). I simply record on DAT tape the audio on another cell phone. When I return home I play the audio into my computer as a WAV file, and then run spectrum analysis on it and scale and filter frequency analysis into raw telemetry data that I can then plot. (This is easily done with Matlab).
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Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
It can be used to provide constant telemetry by making a cell phone call using the Globalstar Network.
- sea-level.- sea-level, will you accept charges?
May I humbly suggest a cost-saving measure:
Rocket: I'd like to make a collect call please.
Operator: Who may I say is calling?
Rocket: Bob I'm-at-23.494923N-82.293823W-3042.4293-feet-below
Operator: One moment please.
*Somewhere in a control room, a telephone rings*
Chart Plotter: Hello?
Operator: I have a collect call from Bob I'm-at-23.494923N-82.293823W-3042.4293-feet-below
Chart Plotter: Wrong number.
*Chart Plotter hangs up*
Operations Manager: Who was that?
Chart Plotter: The rocket. It's over Cuba.
NO CARRIER
Roaming Charges? oh my loord ...
look at all of those zones that you used during that conversation....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Sorry to seem like I'm flaming or starting a flamewar, but I haven't seen anyone, or read an article condemning anything in regards to cellular minus the people attempting to halt drivers from speaking on a cell unless they're hands free for obvious reasons. Maybe a link to what your intending to say would help me out here.
Ummm Maybe this should be argued from NASA's standpoint (in relevance to this article), they are the ones who would suffer from intrusion should anyone intercept or hijack one of the sessions. How is NASA, by using this technology snooping on anything, I think your mistaking NASA with NSA.
How did you mangle this connotation from the article at any point. You've confused me to the extent that...
... well...
I just give up you confused the shit out of me their guy.
Privacy you gotta love it
360 degrees of Karma
This is a QUALCOMM GSP-1620 Satellite Data Modem. http://www.qualcomm.com/globalstar/products/packet modem.html
Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Charge your mobile phone and put your hands free on.
Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing dialup, cell-phone on
Check phone number and may ATT's love be with you
(spoken)
Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Liftoff
This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You've really been connected
And the papers want to know whose telco you use
Now it's time to use the hands free if you dare
"This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And my cell phone's floating in a most peculiar way
And your voice sounds very different today
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
My cell-phone's been cut off
And there's nothing I can do
Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my cell-phone knows which tower to use
Tell customer support I love them very much - they know"
Ground Control to Major Tom
Your cell phone's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you....
"Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the Moon
my cell phone's been cut off
And there's nothing I can do."
Use your cell phone all you want in space. There will be no medium to carry the sound waves, so no one will ask you to "step outside".
If you love God, burn a church!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
NASA is willing to strap a cell phone to their tres expensive rockets filled with sensitive custom electronics, but Continental won't let me use my cell phone in the air. "Oh no, it might interfere with the aircraft's avionics. Besides, you can't use cell phones in flight because they'll see too many cells at once from way up there. Use our AirPhone instead, only $19.99/second!"
I'll bet astronauts don't have to put their seat backs and tray tables in their full upright and locked positions, either. Lucky bastards.
The engineer(s) who came up with this are the kind of people NASA was looking for with it's "Better, Faster, Cheaper" program. I hope NASA finds more engineers like this.
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
It obviously isn't going to be using cellular phone bands, which operate over relatively short distances to a network of ground-based cellular antenna towers, arranged in a hexagonal pattern (cells). The towers are allocated one of seven groups of frequencies, so that each tower is not using the same bandwidth as its 6 nearest neighbors. Transmission power of both the phones and towers must be kept low, so that it doesn't interfere with phones and towers more than 2 cell distances away. The geometry of this arrangement is clearly designed as a 2 dimentional coverage area, only on the surface of the planet. There certainly won't be cellular towers along the way to space.
Reading the NASA article, which avoids the unfortunately cellular analogy, it appears that a great portion of the cost savings is due to using only GPS to track the rocket's position, instead of using radar stations.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
What if the rockets and such don't answer? NASA will never know if the call goes through, because in space, no one can hear you screen...
Oh yeah, they also have to make the system, unlike Iridium, work in buildings, or anywhere in the vicinity of a city. With Iridium you have to go through hell to try and make a call with tall buildings around.
The scarry thing is, compared to Globalstar, Iridium is 10x better at making these sorts of calls.
I think that NASA is making a huge mistake by picking Globalstar over Iridium. First, Globalstar only works in Latitudes between 60 degrees north & 60 degrees south. It turns itself off when it is over the oceans to recharge its batteries, and when its over the land, it needs to be near a basestation to make it work
Iridium does all of its call processing in space, so it will work anyplace in the world, during any time of the day.
Doh!
It used to be that NASA had to have a string of ground stations and ships around the world to get continuous data from space vehicles. This is still an issue for countries like China, and the logistics have impacted their space program. NASA does now use a lot of custom relay satellites, but the communications hardware is still $100k+ one-offs for each application. Using $5k of commercial equipment that is probably better developed is indeed a good thing. The articles also lumped together with the LEO sat communication aspect the increasing use of GPS to augment and eventually replace dedicated radar for positioning. John Carmack