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?

[DerekLyons]

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.

Plus about 1-2kg of support structure and 1kg of release hardware per nanosat, plus about 3-5kg of control & power systems for the release mechanism. Still trivial, but not to be ignored.