Fly Your Own Experiment In Space

An anonymous reader writes "Want to fly your own experiment in space? dvice are reporting on a project called Ardusat — a satellite based (unsurprisingly perhaps, given the name) on Arduinos. For $500 you can upload your own code to the satellite, and run your own experiment for 1 week. Experimenters will have access to a veritable battery of 25 sensors including magnetometer, geiger counter, accelerometer, gas sensors and various others. As well as allowing for affordable space science, this sounds like it would be awesome for educational institutes."

Comments

And why exactly?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Why exactly would you want to run code ON the satellite? "run sensors, download data" That's pretty much the drill... The interesting code is what you run to analyze the data AFTER you get it...

Re:And why exactly?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The article makes it sound like you can control the aiming of the sensors. That could be worthwhile if so.

High School Science Project

[fluffy99]

This sounds like an awesome High School Project! Imagine the fun of learning to program an Arduino, then have it do something real in-space.

Re:High School Science Project

[uzd4ce]

Yeah, especially when it burns up before your high school students can do anything since "None of this payload stuff (neither the sensors nor the Arduinos) are specifically space-rated or radiation-hardened or anything like that, and some of them will be exposed directly to space."

Why? Massive destruction, of course!

[tchernobog]

Then again, you could hack into the main system, power on the thrusters, and ram into a military-grade satellite, changing its azimuth. In the ensuing madness, small splinters get sent across the Earth orbit at high speed, finally surrounding us by the Kessler syndrome we deserve, and cutting us out of space for a good while.

Ah, you can't take away one man's apocalyptic dream. :-)

Maybe I can cut out a job as a space-sweeper.

"Hopeful" language

[uzd4ce]

I wrote the following post, then just said Fuck It. Basically this article spews more shit than a shit-eater on the vomitron rollercoaster. Read if you like, i got tired and quit before finishing. Summary: people trying to scam $35k.

Just the language of the article makes it sound like a kind of pipe dream (or scam) -- nevermind why would i want to use sensors that someone else chose & put on there ... this wouldn't be a real experiment. My experiment would be making beer; I realize Sapporo already did this, but i want space-homebrew.

Instances where the language is really not making me think this is actually going to happen (and TFP is just more marketing):

"designing a satellite made almost entirely of off-the-shelf (or slightly modified) hobby-grade hardware, launching it quickly, and then using Kickstarter to give you a way to get directly involved."
  -- Very oversimplified... "it's all so quick and easy" is what it makes me think ... too easy

" ArduSat, as its name implies, will run on Arduino boards .... ArduSat will be packing.... Lots of sensors, probably 25 ..."
  -- Will run... ok, so it's not running yet. Will be packing ... ok, so it's not packing yet... "probably" ok... they haven't figured out how many???? It's mid-2012, and they're wanting to launch in 2013??? seriously???? Methinks they're running late for the train; er... rocket.

"NanoSatisfi is looking for Kickstarter funding to pay for just the launch of the satellite itself: the funding goal is $35,000. Thanks to some outside investment, it's able to cover the rest of the cost itself."
  -- So everything is covered, we just need to come up with a mere $35k? That's a lot of money for something that's still in the pipe dream phase, never mind the mysterious benefactor element. Who's the exudingly benevolent party?

"this will be a learning experience to see what works and what doesn't. The next generation of ArduSat will take all of this knowledge and put it to good use making a more capable and more reliable satellite."
  -- Translation: you're paying for our fuck-ups so we can build a better one that we'll make the real money off of; you won't be invited for that one

"If this Kickstarter goes bananas and NanoSatisfi runs out of room for people to get involved on ArduSat, no problem, it can just build and launch another ArduSat along with the first, jammed full of (say) fifty more Arduinos so that fifty more experiments can be run at the same time. Or it can launch five more ArduSats. Or ten more."
  -- Umm... where to start... yeah, we have soooooooo many slots to launch it's ridiculous; nevermind our delivery vehicles are soooo diverse that we can change payload size without any problem at all, ah, fuck this.

Re:"Hopeful" language

[qxcv]

This is A-grade linkbait, they're just spewing buzzwords and hoping certain news outlets (*cough* Hack-a-Day *cough* *cough*) will pick up on it and direct their readers to the Kickstarter page. Just looking through their writeup, it seems like they have absolutely no idea how they'll *actually process* the data; for example, they claim that they'll put a camera onboard, yet assuming that this camera uses one byte per-pixel channel and has a resolution of 160 * 180, they'll need (3 * 160 * 180)/1024KiB = 84KiB of memory to store a single frame and probably even more to process said frame. Yet the Arduino has only 1KiB of memory, and their downlink is unlikely to be able to transfer a whole frame in a reasonable amount of time (so no live video). That's only one of the big holes in their plan, here are some of the others:

• They plan to put a GPS onboard, but commercial GPS receivers shut off when they reach 60, 000ft and 999kt. The satellite will exceed both of these limits mere seconds after it leaves the launchpad
• They haven't explained *how* they plan to launch the satellite into space, or why it's costing them a mere $35, 000
• As pointed out above, it's unknown what advantage there is to running code *onboard* the craft when you could simply analyse the data on the ground
• None of their sensors are designed to operate in space. How will their pressure sensor work in a vacuum? Is their temperature sensor rated to work at extreme temperatures? It doesn't sound like it.

tl;dr parent is right and this is a giant load of bullshit.

Re:"Hopeful" language

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually visit the kickstarter page instead of the article, you'd get a clearer picture of what they're claiming regarding funding. They want $35,000 to build the satellite (they claim it's already designed, and have a schematic you can download), then they'll apply for free piggyback launches through NASA and ESA programs. (And if they can't get one free within 18 months, supposedly they have a backer willing to pay for a commercial launch.) If they get enough funding from kickstarter, they'll jump straight to paying for a launch (assuring an orbit that will last longer).

Note that they are affiliated with Discover magazine for a contest involving this, so it seems likely that they're the above-mentioned 18-month backer.

Regarding launch slots and payload sizes, this is a CubeSat, which are usually launched piggyback with one or more conventional payloads to use surplus launch vehicle capacity. They come in the nominal 10cm cube, and also in 20cm and 30cm long (still 10x10 section) 2U and 3U versions -- if they plan to fit 10 arduinos plus 25 sensors in a 1U package, it's not unreasonable to suppose they could fit 50 and the same sensors in a 3U package. In fact, the kickstarter page (seriously, why are you reading some "tech journalist"'s excitable blatherings, and judging the project based on that?!) explicitly mentions this as well.

Finally, in several other posts, you expressed a belief that AVRs are likely to fail quickly, because they're not space-rated. Again, if you'd read the kickstarter page, you'd see that they've addressed that concern -- they plan to run multiple AVRs in lockstep, with voting to override transient errors (flipped bits). And they consider cumulative damage within the expected lifespan unlikely to be an issue -- and the existing data I'm aware of (such as the thinkpads used on the ISS, and several experiments specifically testing behavior of non-hardened commercial- and/or military-grade electronics) supports their claim.

I'm not saying it's not a scam, and I'd certainly do some more research before donating -- mind, I wouldn't donate in the first place because running 5-10 programs in space is just dumb when you can collect all the same data and run a thousand programs on the ground. But what you've proven is that tech journalists, by and large, are excitable morons with a tenuous grasp of the facts they're reporting and an irrepressible urge to dumb things down for their 6-year old sister, not that the actual people behind this are either hypesters with good intentions and no capability of following through, or outright scammers with no intention of following through.

So I invite you, read the kickstarter page and explain based on what they say why you're still convinced it's a scam, or STFU.

Re:"Hopeful" language

[Joel.Spark]

In terms of the image memory issue, the image processing won't be done on an Arduino, but by the flight control computer (the design baseline uses a GOMSpace NanoMind 712C), which uses a 2GB SD card for storage until we can downlink it. Our downlink rate is around 4800kbps, so we've estimated a full-res image download time of under a two minutes. We won't be taking live video, because you're right, you can't get the data down fast enough; the cameras will take single still frames.

The GPS we're using isn't a commercial receiver, it's a space-rated version that's flown successfully on previous missions.

The launch will be done on a normal rocket using the standard P-POD deployment, which is priced as low as $0 for educational missions, as high as $60k for private launches, and anywhere in between with partner arrangements.

The advantage of running the code on boards is you can also design apps that need closed-loop control of the satellite, which isn't possible if if you just downlink the data and use it on the ground.

The altitude we'll fly at isn't a perfect vacuum, and there's going to be some pretty interesting things going on with the ionosphere due to the solar maximum next year that we want to be able to have a look at. And the temperature sensors are going to be inside the casing, where there's limited thermal control to give partial isolation from the extremes of open space.

tl;dr I'd be happy to answer more questions about our design, and I'll add yours to our FAQ section on the Kickstarter.

Cheers, Joel (ArduSat developer)

Most sensors don't care

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Or they're pretty specialized. Honestly, the sensor suite that they have on their proposed satellite isn't going to care what code is running it, the only thing that could possibly be interesting to do is point the thing in some direction so the camera can take a picture of it. They could do that just with a single simple app that points the thing in a specific direction at a specific time. All the other sensors might as well just be sampled constantly and the data downlinked.

I could see things being more interesting with a more customized set of sensors perhaps, but REALLY the only thing you can do with one of these things is point it anyway. It isn't like you're going to be able to stick a 20' long dipole magnetometer on one!

Still, it sounds fun as an educational thing for schools. People could learn a few things about how REAL code is engineered, written, and flight qualified, hehe. Of course 99% of /. could probably use that lesson! I know developing code that has flown on various things was quite a good way for me to learn, that's for sure (and no the next 747 you fly in probably won't fall out of the sky, and if it does it was someone else's fault, V-22s OTOH may be a different matter, but you couldn't pay me enough to set foot in one anyway...).

Re:Most sensors don't care

[Joel.Spark]

You're bang-on about the educational aspect, giving students a chance to get actual hands-on experience with coding real hardware is a big part of what we're trying to accomplish. Cheers, Joel

Re:whats that code for free HBO??

[infonography]

A, B, A, B, right, left, right, left, down, down, up, up

Duh

Why arduino?

[Intropy]

I mean I have nothing against them. But their advantage is being cheap commodities. The expensive part of space travel is the traveling to space part. Why go cheap on the components?

Re:Why arduino?

[Joel.Spark]

The point of using Arduinos wasn't to go cheap on components, but to make the actual satellite itself more accessible and easier to write code for. In fact, we're doing the opposite of going cheap in terms of hardware: the guts of the components for the satellite itself (not the payload) are all pretty costly because they're all space-rated (and most of them are space-proven).

The expensive hardware is the whole reason we need the Kickstarter campagin!

Joel (ArduSat developer)

Re:Getaway specials

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As much as saying so makes me suspect that I may have only a shriveled hatred core where my sense of wonder is supposed to be, the Getaway specials program looks like a superb example of why we don't have the space shuttle anymore... An essentially PR-driven program of giving away chunks of wildly expensive orbital lift capacity without any scientific or technological justification because there apparently wasn't anything more sensible to do with it.

Here's the skinny if you don't like link bait

[guruevi]

They work by using pledges:

For a $150 pledge, you can reserve 15 imaging slots on ArduSat. You'll be able to go to a website, see the path that the satellite will be taking over the ground, and then select the targets you want to image. Those commands will be uploaded to the ArduSat, and when it's in the right spot in its orbit, it'll point its camera down at Earth and take a picture which will be then emailed right to you. From space.

-- Great, personal spy pictures. No details on the quality or if it will even work from up there. But at $10 per picture it's fairly affordable. But again, quality is what is going to make or break it.

For $300, you can upload your own personal message to ArduSat, where it will be broadcast back to Earth from space for an entire day. ArduSat is in a polar orbit, so over the course of that day, it'll circle the Earth seven times and your message will be broadcast over the entire globe.

-- Never gonna give you up... and also, what channels will this be using? How can I hear it?

For $500, you can take advantage of the whole point of ArduSat and run your very own experiment for an entire week on a selection of ArduSat's sensors. You know, in space. Just to be clear, it's not like you're just having your experiment run on data that's coming back to Earth from the satellite. Rather, your experiment is uploaded to the satellite itself, and it's actually running on one of the Arduino boards on ArduSat real time, which is why there are so many identical boards packed in there.

-- This would be great but again, no information on the sensors, quality and whether or not I can distribute my data.