DARPA Fractionated Spacecraft Program Starts

An anonymous reader writes "Start buying Cold War nuclear shelters and piling up the canned food, because Boeing Advanced Systems has started System F6: 'DARPA's Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange space technology program.' In other words: multiple, networked specialized spacecraft swarms that are intelligent enough to perform a single coordinated task together, like analyzing the crops or deciding to destroy humanity, Skynet-style. Actually, it could completely change satellites for the better, according to some experts."

Comments

Two probable early applications

[Anonymous Coward]

1.) Improved station-keeping to allow greater numbers of satellites to operate safely in space. In particular, multiple satellites could navigate as a group, maintaining their positions relative to each other and therefore occupying only one "slot" in orbit.

2.) Synthetic apertures. NASA is planning a future mission using station-keeping or physically separated mirros to create an ultra-high resolution telescope. The idea is already used in ground scopes (and the basic principles are used in the F-22's radar). This can also be applied to increasing the resolution of topographic maps and of satellite imagery.

Re:oblig cliches

[southpolesammy]

Could it be because (a) very few of us are rocket scientists or have the necessary background to comment intelligently on such a topic, or (b) the original post itself had the snarky Skynet quip, and as such, one good turn deserves another?