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."

Comments

In what way is this new?

[Pipedings]

Sure, smaller satellites, smaller payload => cheaper.

I fail to see why formations of smaller satellites should be a new development. If smaller types could accomplish the mission of bigger ones, the big ones wouldn't be up there (carrying large antennae, big lenses or whatever).

Re:In what way is this new?

[Usaflt2003]

The reason that we don't have smaller satellites up there is because many of the miniaturized electronic components that are availble for use down here are not robust enough to survive the rigors of launch and space flight. We are just now starting to really experiment with micro, pico and nano sats as the first generations of mini-tech designed to survive launch and orbit are becoming available.

The advantage of constellations of small satellites are numerous. Take weather observation for example. A single satellite is only able to observe 500 miles of a given weather event... for kicks lets say a hurricane. As it zooms in to get more detailed data X decreases exponentially. Well now we have say 5 smaller satellites flying in a longitudenal line and each has the ability to observe 375 miles of that same weather event with a 25 mile over lap at the edge of each observation circle. You now have an observation line 1725 miles long and the ability to zoom in selectively to collect information while still keeping a bigger picture view on the majority of the storm.

This of course does not mean that larger satellites don't have their place but in the space business smaller is also far cheaper. at a launch cost of approx $10K (or atleast thats what its coming to for my missions lately) if I can create a 100 lb satellite that can do the same mission of a 500 lb satellite I will take it. First it means I can ride share and that means someone else is helping with launch costs. Secondly given that there is a ride share that means more payloads are flying which eventually could lead to economies of scale type cost reductions both in satellite and launch vehicle manufacturing/launch services. Third with the more payloads that fly it means that we may actually start making ngrand new discoveries about space again, improve earth observation capability (for things like weather, put away your tinfoil hats), and finally start putting some slack into global satellite communications capability... most people don't realize how tight that pipeline is, but thats a topic for another post.

Two Danish micro satellites.

[Saggi]

Denmark has all ready send two micro satellites. They measure only 10x10x10 cm!

They were send up 30. June 2003, along with some commercial satellites and were created as student experiments from "Danmarks Tekniske Universitet" (DTU) and "Aalborg Universitet" (AAU). The goal was to see if you could bring them up there and communicate with them.

You can read more about the two satellites here:

http://dtusat.dtu.dk/
http://www.cubesat.auc.dk/

Re:Great but....

[eddy]

Don't know about these, but Sweden is doing research on micro-satellites and those can be deployed within an hour or two using a normal jet-fighter (Viggen/JAS)

Re:I don't get it?

[danharan]

IIRC, you can sent a mini-sat up with an old converted russian ICBM for a small fraction of the cost of a full-scale launch.

Keep in mind this is a university project, and probably not people that would want/need to send 50 up.

A mighty cool hack :)

escape velocity for microsatellites with ion drive

[zardo]

I think somebody needs to develop an ion engine for micro-satellites, then universities may be able to afford rockets like the spacex falcon1 which puts their satellite into low-earth orbit, where it uses the ion engine to build up its speed for escape velocity. Perhaps this is the next "killer app" for these private space enthusiasts. So far JPL is the only place to find a highly efficient ion engine. They just came up with a high efficiency, high-power design for project prometheus. Ion engine micro-satellite, watch for them.

Mars

[WindBourne]

It would be nice to be able so send a number of these system so that a small communication network can be set-up. Basically create a small commuication mesh. Each of the sats could have common capabilities (GPS sender, local comm antena, solar, batteries, etc), with each having a unique capability (camera, surface to sat. comm, etc). No doubt somebody will point out that these do not have enough energy (or space) to run a real science device. Yet, the ability to have redundant uplink/downlink comm, a GPS, and eve multiple cameras would be useful to future missions. If one mission to mars could put 100 of these in orbit, then it could be used by other missions.

Re:Mars

[WindBourne]

Skip the medium size. These are micros. they fit in your hand. One complication with all this, is that:

1. Need a craft to contain them until mars, and them realease them. That is dead weight, but it should be able to be minimized.
2. These systems will have waste. The total weight in batteries ad cells is somewhat high. But that is the price of redudancies.

Interestingly eough, we could send these to the moon first and use these to set up the mesh network for working on the back side of the moon. In addition, we really have not studied it as much as we need. Once these units have survived there for say a year, then sending these to Mars is very doable. I was also thinking that it would be useful to study the 2 mars moons. Then simply send the data back via MRO.

Re:google paid links in main list?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the same links when searching for:
slashdot
python
perl
freebsd
linux

I don't think they're paid links. It seems google is putting in useful links with results, if the first web page is very likely what you were searching for. Has anyone heard more about this, e.g. from google itself?

Satellite arrays

[FirienFirien]

The arrays mentioned here are a nifty piece of lateral thinking. Compare them to the giant detector arrays on earth; if you have two detectors a large distance apart, you effectively increase the aperture size to that large.

There's similar projects widely spread around the globe; by combining information from a wide array of detectors, you can eliminate significant swathes of atmospheric noise, and since you know which direction the arrays are pointing in, you can correct for depth errors electronically (ie if one detector is 90 round the earth from another, any signal that comes from that sector of sky will reach the two detectors at slightly different times (unless they happen to be at 45 either side of the signal) and the two signals can be shifted correspondingly to align the actual signal, whether it be emission from a star or the next wow signal.)

On the other hand, a satellite array would probably be non-directional - can't figure off the top of my head how a signal would currently directed from a satellite, since they'd be serving multiple devices at once.... hmm. Seems like with an array you'd have better scope for having a bigger aperture; though you'd get more chance for errors if the signal was coming from a direction further away from the vertical. Comments?

Re:Satellite arrays

[FirienFirien]

Ooh, unless you gave it depth. Depth would allow you to work out the direction of the wave, which would allow you to work out how much to shift it by. There's a bit of a paradox here in that you need to know the direction of a signal to be able to correspond one bit to another, but presumably starting a communication with a standard byte/word for triangulation would make that easier.

could you imagine...

[Deitheres]

a beowulf cluster of these?!

Sorry, had to be said ;-)

Seriously though... this would provide for something that is pretty lacking in current satellites: successful redundancy.

If a satellite gets hit with debris or something, it's normally down for the count. You get a cluster of these mini satellites... all sharing the workload... if one gets hit, the rest just pick up the slack.

Plus this could open up all sorts of possibilities for amateur space exploration...

Picosats

[Planetes]

There are actually many satellite projects for stuff this small. The space industry in Florida holds an annual competition for college students to design picosats called Funsat that uses the Cubesat format.

MOST: Canada's First micro satellite

[scattol]

MOST (aka the Humble Space Telescope) is the space telescope Canada can affoard: a small one. MOST was Canada's first space telescope and the first micro satellite I've heard of.

We had a full size replica at a star party this summer and this thing is small considering what it does. Really impressive. Small means also very affoardable.

I hear that there will be a competition for time on the MOST so maybe someone will be the first amateur to make use of a micro-satellite.

Re:escape velocity for microsatellites with ion dr

[MichaelSmith]

I think somebody needs to develop an ion engine for micro-satellites

The problem is that they require too much power. 100 kilowatt power supplies can not be built into 10cm^3 devices, so I don't think this is going to work.

But imagine something like a big CD (or DVD). A thin reflective disk with a diameter of 2-3 metres. LCD shutters vary the albedo of parts of the surface so it can use light pressure to change orientation. It uses light pressure to navigate (slowly) through the solar system. You could stack 100 or more of them in a single launch.

Re:Hmmm smaller satallites

[vkkim]

What about us ? I mean if you go up in a space shuttle (I mean like real human transport) or suborbital/orbital transport vehicles (I imagine this is not too far away either) then wouldn't it be easier to navigate among a few dozen larger satellites than among some hundred/thousand smaller ones ?

I suppose the space agency in question would maintain constant tracking of all the satellites that can do damage and just send off flights when it's clear--I doubt spaceflight will become too common anytime soon. Just look at how many shuttle launches we've had in the past few years.

And I believe TFA said the satellites would make formations. One would then only need to track the large group instead of each satellite individually (provided that one doesn't silently fail and slip out of its formation)

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[Zeussy]

One system I have heard is 2 satelites with a cable between them, pulsing an electric current through the cable to induce a magnetic field. Can't remember if it is to either collect debris of deflect it down into the atmosphere. Quite effective its a couple of miles across.

A personal Satellite?

[marlinSpike]

Perhaps I could have my own, to beam my iTunes tracks where ever I happen to be!

Communications Satellites

[Tony]

Communications satellites are about one thing-- pushing as much data through with as little energy as possible. A *lot* of the mass of a satellite is in the power subsystem, and a lot of that won't scale down as well as it scales up.

Then there's the communications issue itself. If you have an array of satellites serving one area, you stand a greater chance of require *two* earth-satellite-earth hops, once through the satellite serving the source, and one for the destination. If you have a single satellite, you can reduce that to one hop (assuming the communications system is capable of point-to-point communications, and is not stuck with point-to-gateway communications).

I don't see pico sats affecting the communications industry right now-- perhaps in a couple of decades, but maybe not. Considering Shin satellite just launched the largest (most massive, with the most bandwidth) satellite ever, there still seems to be life left in the big boys.

Re:And space garbage collectors open their busines

[twiddlingbits]

There was a Shuttle experiment on this about 10? years ago, the put a small payload on the end of a tether cable about 3 miles long and it followed the orbit of the Shuttle. It generated a LOT of electrical current. There was some thought to using the current generated as a power source for ISS. However, the lower orbit moves faster and places tension on the cable, so the stresses have to be carefully considered other wise the cable will snap. This would probably be a good use of the carbon nanotube fibers woven into a cable with a conductive outer surface.