NASA To Develop Small Satellites

coondoggie brings news that NASA has announced it will team with Machine-to-Machine Intelligence Corp. to produce small satellites, called 'nanosats,' weighing between 11 and 110 pounds. The satellites will work together in 'constellations' and facilitate networking in space. According to NASA's press release, it will 'develop a fifth generation telecommunications and networking system for Internet protocol-based and related services.' We've discussed miniature satellites in the past.

Comments

Nothing new Hams been doing for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Amateur radio has been doing this for years. They call them microsats and get cheap flight aboard rockets when they get used as ballast.

Re:Mass appeal

[GileadGreene]

Hate to break it to you, but so-called "picosats" have already been launched. They are indeed in the 1kg mass range. You're also right that "femtosats" are on the cards. See here for one of the more popular mass classification schemes. I'm eagerly awaiting the appearance of the first "yoctosat"...

Re:Mass appeal

[timmarhy]

" When the satellites are deployed, their weight will be zero."

epic fail. they still weigh 100 pounds on earth and it's getting INTO space where they will weigh nothing that's the expensive part.

Re:Mass appeal

[evanbd]

And as soon as the launcher starts to move, the weight is no longer all that meaningful. Everyone in the industry uses metric -- though you'll still see rough numbers quoted in Imperial units, mostly for marketing though. Basically any time 1kg = 2 lb and g = 10m/s^2 aren't accurate enough, people use metric. OP is right, /. should be using metric here.

had to check myself

[WindBourne]

Apparently the trick is not too close and not too far. Low orbits bring down the sat due to grav differences.
OTH, if you are too high or orbit is wrong, then earth plays with it as well.

Thanx for pointing that out. I like to learn.