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Mini Satellites Could Revolutionize Space Industry
An anonymous reader writes "Space Daily reports that University of Toronto researchers are working on a project that could replace conventional satellites with a miniature version no larger than a milk carton. From the article: "At only 3.5 kilograms, the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment 2 (CanX-2) will test small, low-power devices that could lay the groundwork for flying formations of small satellites that could eventually replace larger, more expensive satellites."
How is this going to work i wonder ?, what with all the junk already floating around out there since the late 60's and with the space station how are they going to keep other junk from junking their new baby satallites ?. just a a thought. CH
One of biggest problems about orbit that there is already too much garbage round around the globe. It is creating significant danger to any rocket with men going up there. So collecting of this garbage sure will be next big enterprise after opening civilian space flight.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
It is not the huge stuff that is a problem. It is the small stuff, such as the stage bolts that are exploded. These yield numerous small parts (.5-2 centimers), that are literally untrackable. Yeah, they are small, but then again 17000 Miles per hour is a LOT of energy. As to needing a garbage collector, well, a space laser can probably be put into space and used to start pushing small stuff down into the atmosphere. Friction is a wonderful tool.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think you miss the point. Big satellites are insanely expensive to design, build, and launch. If your one Big Bird blows up on the launch pad, or gets hit by the aforementioned space junk, or is shot down by the North Koreans, you've just wasted the entire expenditure.
IF, on the other hand, you spend an approximately equal amount of money to build a swarm of tiny, cheap, simple birds, that together can do the same job as a big satellite (and have some redundency amongst themselves), you can afford to lose a few from time to time. There are less catastrophes that will deny your orbital presence entirely.
Plus, if your birds are the size of milk cartons (with a mass to go with it), your launch options are a LOT more flexible: instead of commissioning your own launch, you can piggyback on other launches at a huge discount.
Like with clusters of servers, disks, or whatever, flexibility opens up tons of opportunities to save money and be more robust.
I was waiting to see this exact reply. Satellites in that size are not news; the bigger issue here would seem to be that they're planning to cluster them.
One of the benefits of this approach is that they are cheaper to produce and deploy which means short lifespans (and perhaps higher chances of colliding with other junk) are not a problem - launch more than you need and replace them regularly. Behold the disposable satellite!
Indeed. I also love the unnecessary hyperbole - not "little satellites", "mini satellites" or even "microsatellites", but nanosatellites? Are they really one-billionth the size of a regular satellite?
Well done University of Toronto for letting marketing spin and trendy buzzwords get in the way of the facts - now what are we going to call them when when we finally develop orbital devices a bit smaller than a virus?
Tsk, tsk, tsk... whatever happened to precise nomenclature? Bloody kids these days... no respect... we have these different prefixes for a reason, y'know...
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
flying formations of small satellites that could eventually replace larger, more expensive satellites
I hate reading text like this in the context of university research projects. Every prof. looking for grant money seems quite willing to say 'Our new Fremulator design will revolutionize the VeebleFetzer industry and replace more expensive Framistan devices used today.' Considering the amount of additional hardware needed by a flock of microsatellites (propulsion, orientation, power collection, communications), you'll need some huge gains in other areas to really make this cheaper than one big integrated satellite. TFA says nothing to support the idea that these small birds really have practical commercial applications.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
The windshields of the future will have to be able to deflect these things like the gnats they'll become. Can you imagine how fun it would be navigate around this planet if it's surrounded by a fine dusting of millions and billions of these bugs?
Direct away from face when opening.
If you have detectors 5 miles apart, you could easily get interference to both from a satellite in LEO. If you have detectors 5000 miles apart, any data seen by one detector but not the other can be completely ignored, because it isn't from what you are looking at - the signal from a star thousands of light years away isn't changed by the mere 5000 miles at this end. Your point is good for optics and cameras - but the detectors we're looking at here are detecting what the signal from an effective point source is, across a range of frequencies (check out fourier transforms to understand how they get data from it); imaging isn't part of the project.
Radiations from a star or other source can be detected by a single detector; it's just that the bigger the aperture of the detector is (whether a physically single object, or multiple dispersed objects) the better the signal to noise ratio gets.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious