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Arduino Enables a Low-Cost Space Revolution
RocketAcademy writes "Arduino, the popular open-source microcontroller board, is powering a revolution in low-cost space-mission design. San Francisco-based Planet Labs, a spinoff of NASA's PhoneSat project, has raised $13 million to launch a flock of 28 Arduino-based nanosatellites for remote sensing. Planet Labs launched two test satellites this spring; Flock-1 is scheduled to launch on an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket in 2014. NanoSatisifi, also based in San Francisco-based company, is developing the Arduino-based ArduSat, which carries a variety of sensors. NanoSatisifi plans to rent time on ArduSats to citizen scientists and experimenters, who will be able upload their own programs to the satellites. The first ArduSat is scheduled for launch August 4 on a Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle carrying supplies to the International Space Station. The cost of orbital launches remains a limiting factor, however. As a result, Infinity Aerospace has developed the Arduino-based ArduLab experiment platform, which is compatible with new low-cost suborbital spacecraft as well as higher-end systems such as the International Space Station. The non-profit Citizens in Space has purchased 10 flights on the XCOR Lynx spacecraft, which will be made available to the citizen-science community. Citizens in Space is looking for 100 citizen-science experiments and 10 citizen astronauts to fly as payload operators. To help spread the word, it is holding a Space Hacker Workshop in Dallas, Texas on July 20-21. Infinity Aerospace will be on hand to teach Arduino hardware and software."
Which color LED, red, blue, or yellow, can be programmed to blink most rapidly in outer space?
if you can afford to put something into orbit, maybe you can afford to pay a real C programmer
... I guess you can always use weedkiller for artistic purposes, and photograph it from space.
You could afford a real programmer, one that understands machine language. Every lair of abstraction ads complexity.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I've seen some rather hilariously expensive PC hardware being used for satellite construction when an Arduino would do exactly what they need.
Too bad this is Silicon Valley Echo Chamber cranked up to 11. They should be giving demos in places they actually build satellites on a regular basis, like, you know, where Ball Aerospace lives.
Waiting for the real science to begin in 3...2... oh wait, never?
Really, what exactly do they think these are actually useful for except for adding 'In Space' to a bunch of
college programming projects? As these dont even use radiation hardened electronics of any ECC, I
suspect investigating failure modes will be their main use.
Come on, the world is full of useful and interesting things to do, this just aint one of them people!
There is lots more than that; solar panels, batteries, regulators, rotation / positioning thrusters, antennas. Then there is temperature management and the housing of the whole thing.
I guess the low power consumption leads to low weight which in turn leads to a cheaper launch cost.
... except for adding 'In Space' to a bunch of college programming projects?
1. Iterate every patent out there.
2. Add "On A Computer" to the ones that don't already have it and re-patent.
3. Add "...In Space" to all of the ones on a computer and create a new patent.
4. Create one final a patent that patents "adding 'In Space'" to patents.
5. PROFIT!
6. Patent a Arduino BSOD screen. (Or, patent lost packets ... on a computer ... in SPACE.)
7. Profit even MORE!
In the end, mother naure will get her revenge. These things won't last long in space.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Nowhere do I see mention of these arduinos being special, radiation-hardened versions. Nowhere, is there mention about extended temperature range, vibration, etc. These are all important if the mission is expected to succeed. Sure, it might be reasonable to expect a certain fatality rate among a flock of launched devices, and do cost accounting to figure out what tradeoffs can be made. I find it difficult, however, to believe that the current cost of launch, by weight, is lower than the cost of providing reliable hardware.
This is not meant to slight Arduino. I think it's great, but it's made to be a low-cost solution for instances where there is not much demand for reliability, and certainly not for such places where there is a demand for reliability under difficult circumstances. This project is a mistake, a waste of money, and courting disaster. I wish that all of those who had senior authority to approve this project to get fired, and to spend some time in hell (Hell is pretty bad. So, on the scale of things, about twenty minutes should do).
I'm sure some Googling could find me some basics, but this would be a great chance to hear anecdotally from people who work on this stuff daily - how big of an issue is radiation and the hardening for circuits? What kinds of damage/effects are you having to counter, and how do you go about fixing it? There was a story floating around last month of the phone-based projects that are being launched. Are there certain zones or ranges in the magnetosphere where the radiation hits harder, or becomes a non-issue? And what's considered "good enough" when it comes to hardening?
I thought getting the stuff up there was far far far more expensive than the hardware itself. Even if it's space hardened hardware.
Arduino? Why did I instantly think of the arduino in this schematic: http://xkcd.com/730/ ?
This effort (not the xkcd one) is probably a worthy one. But just because of the arduino, I cannot take it seriously. I try, really, but fail.
this is a bunch of my arse. why would someone want to put a $20 microcontroller in a $500k satellite? other than for the hype?
Yeah, it can be done with arduino computers, but all you need is a raspberry Pi.
There's a project on kickstarter now, trying to raise money for launching a microsatellite powered by a solarsail and controlled with a raspberry pi, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aresinstituteinc/lunarsail-the-worlds-first-crowdsourced-solar-sail
There's another project currently on kickstarter that are about to launch a micro satellite, though I haven't been able to find out what computer they are using, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597141632/cat-a-thruster-for-interplanetary-cubesats , but I'm sure anyone who is interested enough, could ask the project creator
per arduino ad astra
None of our spacecraft or ground equipment is based on Arduino.