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Satellite Clusters Go Into Space

Posted by michael on from the synchronized-orbiting dept.

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."

1 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Seriously... by barawn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds fine, but is formation flying really going to be the big challenge 20 years from now when we put a very-long-baseline replacement for Hubble up?

    The replacement for Hubble is the James Webb Space Telescope (also referred to as the NGST, for Next Generation Space Telescope). This is likely to be its replacement, the Terrestrial Planet Finder.

    Anyway, regarding formation flying: Have you ever done it? Fact is, it's hard to get -two- spacecraft to move into relative position to each other, much less 20 or 30. We've simply never done it, and the TPF is NOT the only place we'd want to do it. A gravitational wave telescope, for instance, would be wonderful in space (LISA, I believe, is/was its name) but the concerns were always "can we get satellites to stay within a small fraction of a wavelength of each other?"

    This project is designed to say "Yes, yes we can."