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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."
One tried and true anti-spin method utilized with CanSats (predecessors to CubeSats, see http://www.arliss.org/ is to attach a refrigerator magnet to one end of the satellite. The 'sat will flip 180 degrees as it passes over north and south poles, but remains otherwise in stable orientation. Sometimes simple is good :-)
--
A man is rich in direct proportion
to the number of things he can afford
to leave alone.
— Thoreau
You can slowly kill the spin by loading the satellite with magnetic torque rods. The rods cause the satellite to orient to the Earth's magnetic field. There are active and passive systems.
For coms that are effective in a spin, a couple of omni whips at right angles should do it. The basic unit is called a 1U Cubesat and it's 10cm x 10cm x 10cm container, but they can have mechanisms to pop out antennas as soon as they get out of the container. Some of the designs I've seen have pop-out arrangements of solar cells so they can have up to 500 cm2 of solar cell area and are made to orbit with them pointed away from the Earth. Cubesats can be stacked several in a launch container. (Like a six-pack.) There are 1U, 2U and 3U designs.
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