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

Great,

[Ethanol-fueled]

Just what we need, more ofthis.

I guess it would be more difficult to shoot down a self-healing mesh of small satellites(as opposed to shooting down one big one).

Re:Great,

[Ethanol-fueled]

You, sir, are wrong: I might actually get laid if I had my own satellite.

(woman's voice:)"...oooh, shiny! Ethanol J. Fueled, please take me NOW"!

Re:Great,

[Captain Nitpick]

You, sir, are wrong: I might actually get laid if I had my own satellite.

I think you'd have better luck if you lost some mass.

Re:Great,

[sas-dot]

NASA has to catchup!? Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is launching 10 satellites (including 8 nano) this April 28.

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.

oh yes, no machines have ever communicated before

[justdrew]

thanks god some new company has come around to develop ways for machines to talk to each other. I'm betting it involves 'networking protocols' and 'message' packets being passed around. ground breaking shit here.

Mass appeal

[isomeme]

weighing between 11 and 110 pounds

Come on, people. This is a tech site. Can't we please use metric units? This case is especially annoying for two reasons:

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

2. Those odd range limits -- 11 and 110 pounds -- are obviously Imperial conversions of the more reasonable range 5-50 kg.

We've already crashed one probe into Mars trying to juggle Imperial and metric units. Everyone reading /. knows metric units. Let's go metric-only here. Please.

Re:Mass appeal

[Orange Crush]

As a technologically inclined website, I would think we'd be more concerned with the potential latency issues of orbital IP networks . . . what kind of latency should we expect in knuckle-to-eye units?

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.

Re:Mass appeal

[Raptoer]

They will still weigh quite a bit when in orbit.

But the force of gravity pulling down will be countered by the force of it spinning around the earth. Astronauts are in free fall, not in 0g.

Re:Mass appeal

[NemoinSpace]

Most engineers are quite capable of dividing by 2-1/4 in their head. It's not like this is rocket science we're talking ab ... oh wait.. ummm, Take your religious war elsewhere before I pound you with my 16 oz. hammer like a 10 penny nail!

Re:Mass appeal

[MichaelSmith]

Attitude and trajectory are controlled by opening and closing the shutters. Commands come from the ground by broadcast messages. You could launch thousands of the things on a single vehicle.
It would make a great way of concentrating sunlight for solar power. Remind me again how you can change trajectory with aerodynamics in space? You use light pressure. The shutters control the amount of light being reflected from different parts of the vehicle. Light pressure causes the vehicle to rotate. Once a consistent attitude has been established light pressure gives you a velocity change. The whole lot can be done with a few milliwatts of power to control a CPU and sheets of liquid crystal.

In other news...

[Strange Ranger]

Satellites weighing 110-1000 pounds will be called "Biggie sats" and those at the top of the scale will be called "Venti Sats".

1 Sat = 5,000,000,000 kg

[G4from128k]

Clearly if a nanosat is 5 kg, then 1 sat is a very large unit of mass. On the other hand, given the mass of a typical medium size satellite (call it 500 kg), these are clearly decisats or centisats.

Like you, I hate the corruption of engineering terminology in the hands of marketing. And that NASA, of all groups, would fall for the "nano" = "really small" meme is egregious. Clearly some people need to hand in their geek badges.

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.