Satellite Clusters Go Into Space

prostoalex writes "This Thursday Payload Systems will launch its first set of volleyball-sized satellites from a launching pad in Kazakhstan. The SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage & Reorient Experiment Satellites) is a joint project between Payload and MIT. The satellites can fly in formation, share information with one another, and help other satellites with refueling and repairs."

Comments

MIT SPHERES site

[MonkeyBoyo]

don't know why this wasn't given in the writeup but here is the MIT SSL SPHERES site. And if you look at the pictures you will see that they are not spheres.

DSI Microsat

[morcheeba]

In 1991, DSI (now bought by Orbital Sciences) built a series of similar-sized satellites for Darpa, named Microsat aka SCS.

These were pretty simple - if I remember correctly, they didn't have much of an attitude control system. You can see tell this from the picture because the solar cells on all sides, and the antenna shown (one of two) is relatively omni-directional. I think they had some compressed gas for station keeping (they were supposed to be evenly spaced around the orbit) and/or creating spin ... it was flying in formation, but not too sophisticated.

What troubles me is that the SPHERES have no solar cells. True, electronics take less power now, and LiIon batteries store more energy than our old NiCds, but radios will still take a few watts. I wonder what the life of their two test satellites will be, or if they just forgot to include the solar cells.

We fully qualified 8 of our Microsat satellites, but only lauched seven. The left-over real satellite was a great marketing tool and cool show and tell piece to bring to schools.