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Student-Made Satellite Goes Into Orbit

Posted by Zonk on from the all-i-did-in-college-was-play-video-games dept.

College Student writes "A Satellite built by aerospace students from 23 university groups successfully took off from Plesetsk, in northern Russia. From the article: 'A Russian booster rocket successfully carried a satellite designed by students into a low Earth orbit yesterday for the European Space Agency under a programme intended to help to inspire and train future aerospace workers.'"

6 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. I was a bit worried... by Dh2000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The first announcement (few hours ago) was that the satellite failed to get a signal, and I had given it up for dead.

    Good thing it was easily fixed.

    Now... for the results, please.

  2. Hmmm... by Svippy · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Guess it just proves that it's easier to get a satelite in orbit these days.

    I mean, Denmark have two satelites in orbit ( I think ). Despite our current government is cutting down on it ( though they are saying they are not ), pfft, politicians.

    Anyways, I hope their satelite stays in orbit for a bit longer than that last one. :

    --
    Clicked pie.
  3. Not to rain on their parade, but... by Razor+Sex · · Score: 3, Interesting

    this isn't a first by any means. Here at the University of Arizona, this is pretty common. I have a friend helping to build one of the next Mars orbiters, and students were also involved in builidng Spirit and Opportunity.

    1. Re:Not to rain on their parade, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, Cornell's CUSat is building their own satellite.

  4. Sat/strat imagery? by danharan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    TFA mentions that one of the picosatellites will beam back pictures.

    Anyone know what kind of resolution this thing has?

    This has me wondering how expensive it would be to put one of these cams on a high-altitude balloon to get free-of-copyright basemap data. Not that I have the technical chops to do such a thing, but if this is possible is anyone going to do this soon, and will prices finally start falling?

    --
    Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
  5. Student Build Satellites are Nothing New by sstickeler · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Students have been building and launching satellites for some time. I worked on a purely student built satellite back in college in 1995 which was commissioned by Nasa: http://lasp.colorado.edu/snoe/overview.html