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Ask Slashdot: How Would You Build a Microsatellite?
Dishwasha writes "A fellow co-worker of mine turned me on to CubeSat; apparently there are commercial space companies that will launch CubeSat systems from their payload for a modest fee. Is anybody in the /. community involved in amateur microsatellite systems? How would I go about getting involved at an amateur level? Are there any amateur user groups and meetups I can join? I have limited background in all the prerequisites but am eager to learn even if it takes a lifetime. Any links to design and engineering of satellites would be appreciated."
Anybody can build a satellite.
The hard question is, how are you going to get it launched?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You might want to get a ham radio license, and even if you don't, visit the website of Amsat (http://www.amsat.org), a worldwide group that has put many satellites in orbit. You are welcome to join even without an amateur radio license.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Way back when there were amateur radio (Ham Radio) groups that used to build satellites that NASA would launch. The brand name of one of these was OSCAR.
You could try contacting your local HAM radio club to see if they know of any such efforts on going.
A University Engineering department might very well have a ham radion club, (even though ham radio is not as popular as it once was).
Disclaimer: I have no personal experience doing this. I noticed on O'Reilly there is a cheap series of books by Sandy Antunes. I think surviving orbit will be your biggest challenge? No clue on the quality of those books ...
My work here is dung.
If only there were some place to search for knowledge. But even if there were, it would be unlikely to contain technical knowledge, or any way to get like minded people in touch with each other.
Sounds like a great idea for a new business. I am sure it would be a real money maker.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Essentially all the parts of a microsatellite are deeply involved with electronics. ...
The smaller you can make them, and the lower power, the better.
Lower power smaller electronics mean simpler cases, lighter batteries, solar cells,
Cleverer electronics can remove the need for mechanical parts - if you can trigger the shutter of a camera when pointing in the right direction, versus having a fully stabilised satellite, for example.
How much for a payload of just ball bearings?
I would use tiny tools.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You want to talk to AMSAT, the ham radio homebrew satellite group. They've been building and launching homebrewed satellites for a long time, roughly since the start of US spaceflight. If you are outside the US, you will want to talk to the AMSAT like group in your home country.
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php
This is not a project to undertake lightly. Putting something into space involves a good bit of regulatory compliance. For example, properly documenting that your satellite will deorbit as required, so as not to pose a risk to later satellites. Plus, there can be issues about exporting satellite technology since the launch is likely to take place outside the US. In the US, exporting satellite technology can be treated under the law like exporting military weapons. Serious business.
The most important thing is to decide what you want your CubeSat to do. Are you out for a Sputnik style beacon that you can detect when it goes overhead? Are you going to be taking pictures of all the balloon cameras that didn't make it into space?
Once you decide what you are going to do, then you can start in on the design. Cubesat.org has all sorts of design guidelines, etc.
As for organizations, mailing lists, and the like, the external links on the Wikipedia page you linked into your article should provide an excellent starting point.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Stick a few base pairs together. Repeat as needed.
Stanford and Cal Poly has been involved from early on and has a lot of experience with cubesat launches. UNM also has a program and I think UM and U of Utah Logan. Probably lots of others. Basically schools with a strong Aerospace program are likely to be involved and help with getting in contact with good people. You may, if you have interesting tech knowledge, be able to advise a group of students on a project they are already doing.
Also the air force schools do projects (AFA and AFIT) but they might be harder to work with.
Figure out why you want a satellite or rather what you'd want to accomplish with it. Don't put something up in orbit just so you can say you've done it. There's enough trash up there already.
...very small.
Since when is upward of $150K (satelite +launch) became "modest"?
Well, I would start with a bunch of nucleotides (A, T, G, and C), then assemble them into a DNA strand such that the same short sequence of nucleotides is repeated over and over again in the strand. That's all you need for a microsatellite, really. Doing this will not be easy, of course, without access to some very sophisticated lab equipment... Oh, wait -- you aren't talking about that kind of microsatellite. Moving along...
First you build a large machine capable of building both a same-size satellite and a copy of itself at half its original size.
Then you just turn it on.
I was involved in a recent university project that launched a payload on a suborbital sounding rocket. Depending on your objectives, getting into Arduino or Beagleboard or Gumstix or some similar low-power microcontroller will really open up a lot of possibilities for you. We launched a capsule that radio'd back inertial data using largely off-the-shelf components from places like Sparkfun.
You will find much information on AMSAT (http://www.amsat.org) , JAMSAT (http://www.jamsat.or.jp) or AMSAT-UK (http://www.uk.amsat.org) for some of the amateur organizations around the world, they have been around for decades and have a wealth of experience and can use any offered help! Also get your amateur radio license and then you can access the existing birds that are up there, ARRL (American Radio Relay League) or RSGB (Radio Society of Great Britain) or other organizations are a good place to start. I can't seem to get links to work on /. so will have to leave it up to you to google the above acronyms to find out more.
I have built my share of down-converters and donated my share of money to get some of the satellites into orbit, it is extremely expensive to get something into orbit, not so hard building it in comparison, most of the expense is just getting it out of the gravity well and orbiting.
In fact if you go to the UK AMSAT web site they have a bit on the latest cubesat on there now :)
Buddha of compassion
Apparently that isn't the hard part, as the poster already identified a company that will do it.
Wikipedia?
I'd suggest that the poster take a harder look.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
this book is the standard intro to general space engineering according to my lecturer (I'm doing an MSc in Astronautics and Space Engineering)
Generally speaking, microsatellites are in the range of 10 kg to 100 kg. What you are talking about are cubesats, which are generally nanosatellites (1 kg to 10 kg) and picosatellites (< 1 kg). As others have said, the AMSAT programme is a great starting point; next August come out to the Cubesat workshop and, if interested, hang out for the USU Small Satellite Conference; lots of industry, academia, and government representation. We host a booth every year, as do most relevant players in North America.
As many have said, the amateur radio community has been working in that realm for a while and is a great place to start. The best resource for a general but complete understanding of satellites and their design from a mission perspective (including satellite busses and subsystems) is Space Mission Analysis and Design (see www.smad.com) which is now in essentially the 4th version and is really an excellent text. I had an opportunity to attend the actual course taught by Dr. Wertz and it was great and I read the 3rd edition cover-to-cover (read != deeply understood haha). The Responsive Space (www.responsivespace.com) conference is another interesting venue to add to the smallsat resources previously mentioned.
Unfortunately, space is expensive (even when talking cubesats and shared rides). While there are hobby groups in AMSAT and other communities, for the most part if you aren't government, industry, or academia sponsored by government or industry it can be tough to get to any significant non-professional involvement in space. Don't let that stop you from trying though, and heck you can always make a hobby into a career change!
I work in a precision machine shop that does about half its work for a satellite company. We make brackets, wave guides and other components. These parts often have extremely tight tolerances (0.0005") and are often made of exotic materials (titanium, kapton, graphite, etc - not stuff you find in an average shop). These are not cheap parts. I can't imagine that a group of amateurs would have the funds to build a satellite, even if it is a nano model. You may be lucky enough to participate in that, but I wouldn't count on your project going to space.
most likely with pliers....
Why put more junk in space? While it may be interesting to build something like this, there should be a valid reason for launching making low Earth orbit even more crowded. There has already been one confirmed catastrophic collision between two satellites from different countries. I'm all for learning and engaging in new science and hobbies, but there is so much space junk orbiting the Earth that I think this is not a place for the average or gifted Slashdot scientist. And while I'm on the subject of overcrowding of junk, these professional hobbiests with advanced first-person-view remote controlled aircraft flying in and above the clouds pose a risk for small and commercial aircraft. There are plenty of YouTube videos showing these remote piloted hobby aircraft. I have flown in single engine aircraft and occupying the same airspace as hobbiests is a little frightening.
Duct tape, used condoms, 3 dildos, 9 vibrators, the contents of 18 cans of spam, 1 3 month old baby. You mix them all together in a blender, shove it up your ass, and fart.
That would not be allowed. The government reviews your payload to make sure you're not just launching space junk. Also, slots on the cubesat launchers are highly coveted and there would be mobs of university students who would skin you alive and feed you to the rats over in the biology lab.
I believe these kind of armature cubesats are usually deployed at low altitudes, before the upper stage lights up to boost the main satellite into a higher orbit. Such orbits are only short term, even under the most optimal circumstances they could only stay up about 25 years, most deorbit within a couple years.
One of these companies that supposedly promises to launch your 1U CubeSat is charging $125k for 1kg 1U CubeSat, with a 2 year delivery date. And that is to low earth orbit. Price goes up to $250k for geosync orbit, and $490k to gso/low lunar orbit, whatever that means. Meanwhile, back on Earth, actual prices to launch 1kg of mass into space are $10k with most rockets, or $5k with SpaceX. So this article, as well as Wiki entry are essentially advertisement for a crappy, slow product, that costs 25x-100x more than what the actual price is. And people wonder why we haven't gotten to Mars yet.
For "conventional" cubesats, there are many universities working with the US Naval Academy. They have a "2U" cubesat design with a slightly-smaller-than-1U-sized plug-in compartment, which provides power and communications to a plug-in experiment provided by a university research partner. So, the university partner provides the experimental plugin, and a Really Good Story to convince the USNA that the experiment is worthwhile. USNA launches the cubesat, and the middies manage it, to get experience managing satellite assets without risking big military birds. At least, that is what I remember from attending the Amsat symposium a couple of years ago to give a paper on something Completely Different.
Keith Lofstrom server-sky.com
For the last four years, I (and a tiny part-time team of volunteers) have been working on a different way to think about satellites:
http://server-sky.com/
These will be 3 gram, dinner-plate-diameter 50 micron thick satellites, based on some recent advances in semiconductor technology and Ivan Bekey's "Advanced Space System Concepts and Technologies: 2010-2030+". We are doing most of this as open technology, and I make presentations to groups that might help. Monday at NIST Gaithersburg, for example.
Satellites are surfaces that combine stimuli and solar power to make microwave transmissions to earth. A one micron thick layer of graded junction indium phosphide makes a 20% efficient solar cell and is very rad-hard. Ditto for Penryn-process silicon. That recent work, plus a number of other fortuitous recent discoveries, plus the kind of manufacturing techniques we use to make LCD displays, plus solar-sail-like maneuvering means we can built extremely thin satellites. They need to be heavier than 100g/m^2 to stabilize their orbits against light pressure, but they still can beat current satellite watt-to-kilogram ratios by more than a factor of 100.
The "satellites" will be arrays of thousands of these thinsats - a 99 kg array will contain 33 thousand of them, and collect about 160 kilowatts. That fits the sub-100kg definition of "micro satellite", though I hate the abuse of the scaling unit.
This is all very speculative, of course, and the thinsats that get launched will be very different from our early designs.
See the server sky website for more. Pretty chaotic right now. I use it as a public notebook, slowly improving the content as we learn new things, attempting to establish all this as public domain and attract informed discussion. While most readers will be highly skeptical until experiments get launched, non-analytical skepticism merely keeps competitors befuddled, giving us a head start. Folks with imagination, who can do research and the math and physics, have the opinions we care about.
Keith Lofstrom server-sky.com
Having been on a team that has built and launched two cubesats, I consider myself somewhat of an expert in the area. I'll answer this question to the best of my knowledge, I've been to the cubesat conference for several years now (it's mostly academics but most of the launch companies are there.) The first couple of years as a student I would get all excited whenever companies like this would start up. I noticed quickly that the same company never came around to the conference more than a few years, why? Because they couldn't get the funding, a launch requires some where in the range of 10$ million. There are plenty of companies that start up and claim that they will launch a rocket with a 50-100 (or so cubesats) and that will cover there costs, the problem is they have to find that many people to fill the spots. No one has done that yet. Cubesats were designed as a containerized system to mitigate the testing and integration launch costs. Everything that goes to space has to be thoroughly tested, when you have to do this on a case by case basis, it takes a lot of time (=money). So if you already know your payload will fit in a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm (1U) and has a ~1kg weight then that saves a lot of testing. Another benefit of the container is NASA can slap them all over their rockets and launch 10's of them (currently) at a time. Since every rocket has tons of payload margin (you want to ensure your payload reaches space you size its mass several percent smaller than what the rocket can handle to ensure delivery) and some payloads are in the tons, throwing on a few cubsats won't really do a thing to your mass budget. Now NASA has a program for this: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/elana/index.html this has been successful. As far as launching your own, I wouldn't count on it in the near future. Launching a satellite is not trivial, you have to make sure its not going to break apart, or damage other payloads on the way out of its container. Look up ISBN: 047075012X . You have to make sure its not going to outgass because volatile compounds evaporate and can cause problems. You have to use materials that can withstand the rigors of space, atomic oxygen and radiation can be rough on most materials. Plus some materials like PVC will evaporate in a vacuum. Another problem is ensuring you have enough battery and solar power to support your payload. You have to make sure you payload will not shake apart on the way up (rockets are very very bumpy rides). The satellite should have an attributed and control system to make sure it can orient itself in the right direction (for your solar cells and radio). And last but not least is the radio and comm system. A ground station is needed and the appropriate radio frequencies used (if you want anything fast you have to get a license from the gov, this is very difficult). The satellite itself needs to have a good antenna (if you have any nulls in your antenna pattern then you won't be able to communicate with it when the null is pointed at you. Oh, and if you put a camera on it the NOAA has to know about it and approve of your data (really stupid, but that's the way the government is). Anyway I could go on for a long time... Building a satellite requires people from many different disciplines to pull it off. Unless you are going for insanely simple you would have to have a group of people to accomplish the task. If there is available access and launch costs come down I could see a few hobbyists groups pulling it off in 10 or so years if they can clear all of the governmental hoops. I won't believe any commercial venture claiming that they will launch cubesats (or tubesats http://interorbital.com/TubeSat_1.htm) until they actually do.
Don't try to do it by yourself even if you have the ability. Even if you can accomplish it, it is much better to work with others. It is one of the things I like about building satellites and being involved in space in general. You learn a lot that way. Working with others will also show you new things and you could develop interest in new areas of engineering applied to space that you might not be aware of at the moment. Or that you didn't think you'll ever be interested in.
Join Amsat - Amsat-NA, Amsat-UK, whatever country you're in - or not - doesn't matter:
http://www.amsat.org/
http://www.uk.amsat.org/
http://www.amsat-dl.org/
http://www.amsatsa.org.za/
etc
etc
Find out what groups there are within Amsat and start talking to people. Plenty of projects. The way things are going now, chances are that a college or university near you is building at least a cubesat. Find out if you can get involved there. If you have lots of technical experience, they might even want you to give guidance to other members of the team - now you're really contributing.
You don't have to be a radio amateur. You don't have to become a radio amateur. Satellites cover most fields of engineering (if not all of them!), so there will be something you can do.
If you are a radio amateur, your station might even be used as the control station for a satellite, again cooperating with people from all over.
And enjoy it, otherwise it just becomes another job!
Which government ? The one from the launcher company* ? Just ask Congo for a slot in the next launch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrlKWtkce5I , you can probably get it if you pay enough. * In fact if you are in the US or use any US space equipment, the US government take also a look. But just move to Europe and buy european stuff...
What you say is significant, but I'd not be worried too much in this orbit. It's so low that atmospheric drag will get the thing down within one year (remember the space station needs tons of ergols yearly just to maintain it where it is, in the same surroundings).
What worries me more is the disappointment of you all people when you'll realize within 1 litre or two you'll just not be able to fit actual pointing (so no images) and this orbit will leave your beast in ground sight just a couple of minutes per day (so no contact nor relay at will).
One thing that may be efficient is a large collection of radio relay, commonly shared. But then you'll quickly find it's too costly to deploy.
To end in a more positive note: besides Cubesats you have a slightly costlier but *much* more efficient alternative: Iridium passenger payloads.
There, you have much more space allowed, a power plug and an optical-compatible pointing provided by the host, along with optional high-throughput links *all the time* along the whole orbit, so indeed this starts providing an actual experiment potential...
http://investor.iridium.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=547289
http://www.orbital.com/HostedPayloads/
Herve S.
If you want to get an idea of what's involved, have a look at the FunCube project - http://funcube.org.uk/
It got back from vibration testing in early November - http://www.funcubedongle.com/?p=1323
Looks like the North Korean's are asking help on slashdot.
Hey, some guy just built a helicopter, why not the first Lego satellite?
As the AmSat Guys, they have huge amounts of experience building micro satellites (and deploying them).
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
Professor James Cutler: http://aerospace.engin.umich.edu/people/faculty/cutler/index.html
RAX: http://rax.engin.umich.edu/
Prof. Cutler works on novel nanosats and how to streamline the nanosat process. He will probably push you off to his students, but I am sure they can point you in a better direction, what sort of commerical off the shelf (COTS) parts you can get and applicable restrictions.
GO BLUE!
So not hard per se, just expensive.
That article has no information whatsoever on how a private individual would procure a launch. And the prices are dubious-- slightly after the part quoted, for example, the article says "recently it was announced that CubeSats can fly on Atlas V launch vehicles. The cost of a single secondary payload on board of an Atlas V has been quoted as $1 to $2 million per slot."
Maybe, if you're an educational institution with good networking and negotiating skills, you might be able to negotiate a launch for $40K.
There are plenty of sites on how to build cubesats, and where to procure parts. Finding that information isn't hard; use google. As for launching-- that's up to you. Just saying that somewhere out there there are companies that will sell you a launch "for a modest fee"-- well, I suggest that there's a lot of handwaving here. If you want not just build a cubesat, but get it into orbit, you might want to nail this down a few more particulars: what companies? How do you get on their manifest? What are their requirements? Are they only selling launches to educational institutions at a cost that barely covers the cost of integration, or do they sell to individuals or amateur groups, which is what you seem to be? And, for the start-up companies, have they ever launched their vehicle into orbit, and if not, when do they expect to demonstrate their first launch?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Absolutely! While I support doing things just to learn and have fun. You really shouldn't launch junk into orbit just because its cool. It messes with things that are actually doing stuff.
Its the equivalent of running seti@home on a heavily loaded production server: stupid.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
In an Altoids tin. Obviously.