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Satellites To Try Formation Flying on ISS
SoySauc writes "From a story on the New Scientist site: 'A soccer-ball-sized satellite will soon be floating aboard the International Space Station. Once joined by two others, it will help researchers test formation flying and autonomous rendezvous and docking maneuvers for future orbiting satellites.' NASA's DART mission was designed to do the same thing, but in 2005 shut itself down and bumped into the satellite it was only meant to approach."
Btw, around here, soccer balls are known as mini death stars...
NASA's DART mission was designed to do the same thing, but in 2005 shut itself down and bumped into the satellite it was only meant to approach.
HAHAHA Euro-fa... oh, uh. Right. NASA.
By the look of it you could also use it for lightsabre practice. Indoors, at least.
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I wonder what else you could do with formation flying satalites?
Oooh put a bunch of high power leds or lasers on those suckers and you could use them as pixels. Pop-ups IN SPAAACE!
I'm not sure why this is news, I mean, seeing that a simillar robot was planned and partly developed in 2001.
:-).
What I also don't understand is, why the heck the satellites use only ultrasound waves for navigation and positioning. Does anybody know, how they know if something is in front of them? Another robot, a wall, a person? It doesn't say anything about any additional sensors does it? Hopefully it has some
I would also include wireless technology on board to allow the robot to talk to the ship and other robots / sattelites. This way it would be easier to get their position and allow the astronouts to monitor it remotely...
that sounds so gay.
From the article:
The first SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold Engage Re-Orient Experimental Satellites)
Ok. Yes it's cool sometimes to think of a clever name for something that just happens to spell out a nifty word, but this is crazy. Is "Synchronized Position Hold Engage Re-Orient Experimental Satellites" really descriptive? Would you put that horrid name on a technical paper? Only GNU projects such as WINE (WINE is not an emulator) should use ridiculous acronyms.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
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Will there be some hype for the first eclipse between the ISS, the soccer-ball-sized satellite and the earth ? I think I won't go to work that day. I could not handle the fact that I missed that kind of eclipse with my pinhole blackbox.
Any further project for peanut-sized satellite around the soccer-ball-sized satellite ?
For(k;;)(Fork();)
Curiously, and despite a lot of success in many domains, NASA never fully mastered automated orbital rendez-vous, which is almost routine for USSR and then Russia space agencies, since almost 30 years (and is very important for keeping the International Space Station fridges and tanks full). Here for example we can read :
"The Soviet Union performed the first automated rendezvous in 1967 and since then, Russia has used fully automated systems to dock Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to its space stations."
Who's the first to hack the system, and display a giant goatse in the evening sky?
Just wait till the Russian satelites get up there. $100 they'll kick some tremendous NASA ass.
I'm wondering why they didn't use compressed oxygen instead of compressed carbon dioxide? If the choice was arbitrary, why put the extra strain on the ISS's life support systems by adding more CO2 to the environment? I'm guessing there's a good reason to use CO2? Any ideas?
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I bet this soccer ball sized satellite in a space station the size of a football field will generate a Library of Congress worth of information.
This has so many uses, that is is amazing that we have not developed it before. Consider what it takes to work on the ISS, or a future moon/mars stations. The more often that humans are outside, the higher the risks to them. OTH, if this works, it will enable us to first develop sats. to work on the outside of the ISS, that are controled by the ground. Later, it will be a semi-autonomous task-orientated robot. This will also be useful for modifiying other sats in space (perhaps the hubble). This can be used on repair of the james webb telescope as well as future upgrades.
Interestingly, this could be used by the military for taking over an enemy sat, rather than destroy them (turn the tool against its owner; ueful considering that NK and Iran are putting sats into space). The uses are nearly infinite.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Although it needs much larger scale of formation (formation with miles between elements). Extremly precise formations of satelite, can be used to do Interferometry to try to detect Gravitational radiation.
...that... or having the "??AA" trying to enforce non skipable Ads.
LISA is such an exemple. (but it's Solar sattelite, following the same orbit as the earth and keeping constant formation.)
And every "\/1@gr/\" seller of the planet trying to buy ad space on them.
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