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13 Pico-Satellites to Launch June 28th
leighklotz writes "The CalPoly CubeSat Program announced a launch date for its 13 amateur satellites: June 28, 2006 at 19:39:11Z, from the Kazakstan Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Russian DNEPR-1LV rocket. The satellites are made from a kit, and are 10cm cubes." Read on for more info, including links to many of the individual satellite projects.
leighklotz continues: "There are also pictures of 14 satellites and info about some of them:
- ION, University of Illinois
- RINCON, University of Arizona
- ICE Cube 1, Cornell University
- KUTESat [also] University of Kansas
- nCube nCube Norweigian University of Science and Technology
- HAUSAT-1 Hankuk Aviation University
- SEEDS Nihon University
- CP1 and CP2 Cal Poly
- AeroCube 1 The Aerospace Corporation
- Voyager University of Hawaii
- ICE Cube 2 Cornell University
These folks have a list of ongoing CubeSat projects. And as always AMSAT is a good organization to join if you have any interest in using or building your own satellites."
Pico-satellites are way better than Vi-satellites or Emacs-satellites.
I quote others only in order the better to express myself. -- Michel de Montaigne
That is a sun synchronous orbit. Fairly useful if you are taking photos. Every time you pass over part of your orbit, the shadows will be at the same angle as your previous pass. Much easier to calculate form and height when you always know the relative angle to the sun.
It is also a useful orbit in that it covers the entire planet, including the poles. If you are interested in items, such as global warming and relative ice-pack, you need to use this sort of orbit.
Not sure if any of the sats in this are configured as Amsats, but this high an inclination could even allow people living in the far north and far south some communcation relay capability.