50 'Nanosats' for Sputnik's 50th Anniversary

Roland Piquepaille writes "Europe will launch 50 ultra-small satellites in 2007 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite of the Earth launched in October 1957. BBC News Online writes that each nanosatellite will weigh only about 1 kilogram and represent a single nation. Arianespace will launch all 50 of the nanosats in a single payload. The nanosats will stay in orbit for about 2 years and will perform experiments chosen and designed by each individual country. For the first time in history, 50 different countries will have the opportunity to do space research, and probably at little cost. In the future, similar clusters of nanosats could be launched for collaborative missions, acting as groups or swarms and having a single goal. Read more for selected excerpts and pointers to this future historic mission."

Comments

Re:Shouldn't they split the payload up?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

It's not a big deal. There is only 50kg of stuff here (50 sats x 1kg), so they are most definitely not launching that payload by itself.

Every rocket has certain balance and performance parameters that it has to meet. If a rocket can launch a payload of 25,000 pounds, but the payload slated for that rocket only weighs 20,000 pounds, they will fill out the remaining weight with ballast, typically water or other heavy material. Sometimes, instead of using ballast, other smaller payloads can hitch a ride on the rocket essentially "for free". Sometimes it's literally free, if the owners of the rocket are charitable. But "free" here means that there is no weight penalty to the rocket, because it would have been filled out with ballast anyway.