Students Design A Satellite Via Internet

Roland Piquepaille writes "A group of 250 students from many European universities has collectively designed a satellite by using a dedicated news server and weekly chats on Internet. By using the Web, the virtual team was able to move from design to construction in less than a year. The SSETI Express is currently under integration in one of the technology centers of the European Space Agency (ESA) in the Netherlands. Only a few selected members of the team will attend the launch which will be part of the Russian mission Cosmos DMC-3 in May 2005. The SSETI Express will embark three mini 'cubesats' for specific experiments while the main satellite will test a propulsion system and act as a transponder for amateur radio users. I sure hope that this collaborative action will be successful. Read this summary for more details."

Comments

Space monopolies are bad

[James McP]

I read an article recently (http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~24 79286,00.html) that NASA can't get rid of Lockheed despite the cockups with Genesis, Mars Climate observer and Mars Polar Observer because Lockheed has too many of the people with experience. The only way to avoid this is to get more people in the loop.

NASA has a program where high schoolers can put together an experiment to be run in the pressurized portion of the shuttle, which is great, but doesn't compare to the fact that there are now three colleges that have experience building orbital devices and an untold number of individuals who were involved in the collaboration. If the ESA keeps this up we might see several european aerospace companies form in the next decade.

Look out Lockheed.

Build your own

[clockmaker]

courtesy of Pumpkin, Inc. (makers of the Salvo RTOS)

http://www.cubesatkit.com/

The satellite story is impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a lab where we build comm sats for the govmnt and what these kids did has been done before [US radio amateurs put up the "echo" [sp?] sat last summer for instance] but not by so many, and not so inexpensively.

But where is the disclaimer that the notorious Roland is either under the OSTG umbrella or kicking back ad revenues under the table to /.?

or maybe some of us are jealous our sumissions get roundfiled a lot more often than not?

Re:amsat

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, let's see..

• Yep, amateur sateliites are very, very cool. Half a dozen in orbit working right now, a dozen more coming the next five years or so.
  
• Most of the ones up right now are workable with about $US 1K worth of equipment, some for less, some for a *lot* less.
  
• And with that said, to hear P5A (the one going to Mars) you're going to need a surplus 5+ meter dish (starts at about a ton), a two-axis mount with positioners accurate to much less than a tenth of a degree, and a very, very high performance microwave receiver.
  

While a large fraction of the radio astronomy community are hams, very few hams actually work in radio astronomy (or for JPL's Deep Space Network). So don't go thinking you're going to hear P5A unless you always wear wind up watches because quartz ones are banned at work. :-)

Please, more clue.

[jemfinch]

A group of 250 students from many European universities has collectively designed a satellite by using a dedicated news server and weekly chats on Internet. By using the Web, the virtual team was able to move from design to construction in less than a year.

Last I checked, "the web" didn't include NNTP. Surely Slashdot is above the uneducated synonymity between the internet and "the Web."

Jeremy

Re:Design to construction in less than a year...

[mitchus]

The point is not really to get it to work properly, it's to interest students in space tech.
Space missions are a problem, because the project lifespan from first spade to launch is typically five to ten years, too long for students to have a chance to get involved without a career decision.
These cubesats are an excellent idea, because they can hitch a ride on some commercial launch since their payload&volume are minimal.