Students Design A Satellite Via Internet

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Students Design A Satellite Via Internet

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 20, 2004 @07:18AM from the a-piece-here-a-piece-there dept.

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."

13 of 137 comments (clear)

Design to construction in less than a year... by goretexguy · 2004-10-20 07:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

Great. But will it work properly?
1. Re:Design to construction in less than a year... by commodoresloat · 2004-10-20 07:27 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  only for the next two years. After the internet dies, this satellite is history too.
it looks like .. by r0b0t+b0y · 2004-10-20 07:21 · Score: 4, Funny

.. a borg cube! it even has mini-cube satellites that make me think of decentralized systems (i know it's not, but that's what it makes me think of)

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i do not use drugs, i AM drugs -- Dali
What next? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 07:22 · Score: 5, Funny

The first satellite has been automatically generated by the Internet. Pretty soon, the skies will be filled with satellites offering penis enlargement, Nigerian scams, and hot stock tips.
Re:Roland the Whammer by Profane+MuthaFucka · 2004-10-20 07:24 · Score: 4, Informative

That's right. Notice how every single one of his stories has a link to the real article, and a traffic link to his website, plus another traffic link under his name.

A lot of the stories are pretty interesting, which helps. But, wouldn't they be just as good without the traffic links? If he wants a link to his site, it's right there under his name already.

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Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Wow by Moby+Cock · 2004-10-20 07:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is very impressive. The level of detail required on such a complex project is often daunting. To acheive a design with team members so far flung is nothing short of incredibe. I am not entirely sure what to make of it. It's a little like Linus' idea of "many eyeballs". Except in this case its not finding bugs its bulding satellites.

Imagine an extention of this work being used to solve problems and develop workarounds for breakage on the ISS or (dare I say it....) Mars.

This is really very cool.
why can't we do it? by WormholeFiend · 2004-10-20 07:28 · Score: 4, Funny

with the collective thinking power of slashdot, I'm sure we could achieve something equivalent, or better.

imagine a large, spherical grey satellite...

any post made by the trolls against this satellite would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained. This satellite would be the ultimate power in LEO!

trolls: That's no communications satellite. It's a slashdotting station!
Obviously.. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 07:29 · Score: 5, Funny

this could be used by terrorists to spy on God-fearing American citizens. Ban it! Ban it, I say!
amsat by Mr2cents · 2004-10-20 07:30 · Score: 4, Informative

Aha, an other HAM satellite! Don't forget HAMs will be able to recieve data from Mars if this mission succeeds. (ok, at 5 baud or so, but an interesting project nonetheless, and a reason for me to get a license.

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"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
1. Re:amsat by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 07:50 · Score: 4, Interesting
  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. :-)
I like this... by apostrophesemicolon · 2004-10-20 07:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

it seems like more and more people are taking things into their own hands, bypassing the government agencies' bureaucratic process that goes for ages..

we've seen the SpaceShipOne made it, and now a 'brute force' construction of a satellite.. this only leads to the question: what's next?? LEZ DO DIS!

-A simple hydrogen-powered car model that's ready to be mass produced? (instead of stuck being a prototype)
-better next-gen ASIMOs?
-advanced propulsion technology?
-human habitat for mars?

sheez, when I thnk about how people can combine their power and time to bruteforce-building something.. almost nothing is impossible
as for me, im still working on my warp machine :p
Boycott Roland Piquespam by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 07:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Attention Editors: Roland is a cash-for-linkage spammer who uses each Slashdotting you award him to rake in a mint in Google adwords.

Attention Slashdotters: Join the fight against Roland by mirroring his content and not clicking through.

Roland "writes":
Students Design a Satellite via Internet
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 whilethe main satellitewill test a propulsion system and act as a transponder for amateur radio users. I sure hope that this collaborative action will be successful. Read more...

Here is what ESA says about this collective work over Internet.

Scattered in universities across Europe, a 250-strong team of students have never collectively met in person, but between them they have built a space-ready satellite.

Collaboration between the pan-European network of students, universities and experts involved in the Student Space Education and Technology Initiative (SSETI) has been carried out via the internet.

Now that the completed subsystems are being delivered to ESA's European Space Technology Centre ( ESTEC ) in the Netherlands, remote participants from Italy to Denmark are eagerly following the integration process through daily photo updates, the integration logbook, and even a webcam.

What is the mission of this satellite?

Like a Russian doll, SSETI Express will carry inside it three smaller 'cubesats' -- 10-centimetre cube technology testers built respectively by universities in Germany, Japan and Norway -- for deployment when in orbit. The main SSETI Express satellite itself will test and characterise a propulsion system, return images of the Earth and serve as a transponder for amateur radio users.
Here is a drawing of the future SSETI Express satellite. (Credit: ESA) It measures only 60 by 60 by 70 centimeters and is part of the Russian mission Cosmos DMC-3. If everything goes fine, it will be launched in May 2005.
The SSETI team is already working on another satellite, the European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO). This one will be more complex than Express, weigh 100 kilograms, and it will be launched by an Ariane 5 rocket in 2007.

Besides these two satellites, the ESA looks at the future.

Coordination between groups is carried out using a dedicated news server and weekly Internet Relay Chats (IRCs) as well as the SSETI website. Face-to-face meetings are the exception rather than the rule, with group representatives meeting every six months for a workshop at ESTEC.

Beyond Express and ESEO, SSETI has hopes of becoming a fully-fledged facilitation network for all student space activity, with members carrying out detailed feasibility studies for a European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) a European Student Moon Rover (ESMR) and even an orbiter for Mars.

And here is the conclusion of Philippe Willekens of the ESA Education Department.

"This unique opportunity for students is also a unique opportunity for ESA to see how the young generation is working through a wide internet-distributed system, with little resources, but great enthusiasm and energy."

Good luck to all!

Source: European Space Agency news release, October 19, 2004
Re:Roland the Whammer by bleckywelcky · 2004-10-20 08:58 · Score: 4, Informative

As well, he is a submission whore. So far this year, he has had 103 stories show up on SlashDot. So how many has he submitted? Let's say 1 out of every 4 gets accepted (at most). That's 412 submissions (at least) in the past 305 days. I wonder how much he makes off the advertising on his site and if it's a business I should try to get in on ...