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.

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: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.