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NASA Goes Bargain Basement With New Satellite
coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA has announced a new low-cost satellite that could be ideal for those who wish to get into space quickly and (relatively) inexpensively. "The Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT) is 39.5 inches in diameter — not much larger than an exercise ball. It is hexagonally shaped and clocks in at a little less than 200 Lbs. It can carry a payload up to 110 Lbs. [...] NASA said FASTSAT is just the right size for earth observing missions, space science missions, and technology demonstrations. 'We think we can do whole missions for less than $10 million instead of the traditional $100s of millions, and that includes the launch vehicle, the satellite, and the widget you want to test,' said Marshall Space Flight Center's Edward 'Sandy' Montgomery in a release."
Elon Musk intends his Falcon rockets to put ~500 lbs in LEO for ~$8 million. Two failures to date and another attempt coming up early next year (SpaceX dates being rather fluid.) Of course this is only the cost of the launch, not the experiment/science etc. Anyhow, the NASA numbers seem reasonable.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Earth has a magnetic field, and if you place another magnet in the field, oriented differently, a torque results. The torque is very low, so it takes a while to have a noticeable effect, but if all you're doing is pointing at the earth, it's sufficient.
Generally, you'll see the magnets either on the ends of long booms (for satellites intended to stay oriented in one direction) or as electromagnets (for more pointable spacecraft).
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
There's a sentence in the article that doesn't make sense and I wanted to clarify it for those reading.
These dimensions place FASTSAT squarely in the microsatellite category where it will compete with such as SpaceX's Falcon 1 and Kistler's K-1, NASA said.
Except that SpaceX and Kistler both make ROCKETS not satellites. The competitors for FASTSAT would be companies like Surrey and Orbital Sciences.
However, (what I think the author probably meant to write) is that SpaceX's Falcon 1 (and Kistler's K-1 if it hadn't just been cut by NASA) would be great rockets to launch a small payload like this. Falcon 1 tops out at a few thousand pounds, so you could cheaply load a few of these into a rocket. For $7million for the rocket and a few million more for each satellite you could send up several serious NASA missions.
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=1+meter+in+inches&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
It's amazing how Americans don't want to use the "M" word
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Or even "a metre". Try converting 39.5 inches into metres and you'll see where the number came from. Then ask why it wasn't written "1 metre" in the first place...
There is already a trend. Surrey Satellite Technology and the University of Surrey have been building and launching micro satellites since 1981, often using COTS components.
It's a booming commercial area.
I don't understand your question. Are you asking if the cost of communicating with the satellite is going to be more than the cost of the satellite? That would depend on how one does it. Any place the satellite overflies on a regular basis could do, say if you only need to communicate every few days or so.
I agree that the magnetic alignment system will take a long time to null out any perturbations from launch.
I'm not convinced that the platform wouldn't eventually stabilize though. Especially since there's no moving parts. All it has to deal with is some atmospheric drag (which I believe) is pretty constant, and possibly some solar (going from the light side to the dark side) expansion/contraction. Am I missing something?
Even if it was stable, I don't believe there would be ANY pointing capability.
First of all, I wanted to question whether anybody knew if they had any customers for this satellite bus? The two photos looked more like non-flight testbeds than shiny, thermally controlled satellites we're used to seeing.
Second, does anyone know if a magnetic orientation system has been used on any satellites in the past? Obviously, the rotation rates that can can be achieved by such a system must be pretty low, especially if the satellite has no moving parts to extend booms, so I'm curious what sort of payloads this bus is useful for.
Third, one of my first thoughts is it sounds like they might be specifically targeting themselves at SpaceX. With the 1400 pound LEO capacity of the Falcon 1 for $8 million, it's the only rocket that could put one of these things (perhaps two) into space for the $10 million estimated in the article. Even the current low cost contender in the US, the Orbital Sciences Minotaur, which reuses SRB's from retired Peacekeeper missiles, costs over $12 million per rocket, not counting payload integration and launch, as I understand it.
Lastly, the article says this satellite would be a competitor with the Falcon 1, which is obviously false. The Falcon 1 is a launch vehicle. FASTSAT is a satellite. They go together, not compete.
"Better, faster, cheaper" was tried. They also tried the "take more risks, do more science". The problem with the first was that cheaper was the immutable part of that closed equation. The problem with the second was that risk taking was valued but failure was punished.
Neither produced any forward motion.
This, too, will fail. Simple reason: space research and exploration is a custom, one-of-a-kind endeavor at this stage. You can't make a "standard" bus because as soon as you do, somebody will need more [power,data,real estate,angular momentum,precision,jitter compensation] that the standard bus can provide. And then you're back into the business of custom modifications for each scientific payload. It has been tried so many times, it's funny (sad, not ha ha). There have been minor successes, but in the end, the savings are relatively marginal, considering there is a raft of designs out there which can be used as starting points for custom hardware.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?