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NASA To Develop Small Satellites

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-necessarily-bigger-than-a-breadbox dept.

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.

9 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Great, by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).

    1. Re:Great, by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 4, Funny

      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"!

    2. Re:Great, by Captain+Nitpick · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      But then again, I could be wrong.
  2. Nothing new Hams been doing for years by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  3. oh yes, no machines have ever communicated before by justdrew · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  4. Mass appeal by isomeme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
    1. Re:Mass appeal by Orange+Crush · · Score: 4, Funny

      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?

    2. Re:Mass appeal by GileadGreene · · Score: 4, Informative

      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"...

  5. 1 Sat = 5,000,000,000 kg by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.