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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."
if you can afford to put something into orbit, maybe you can afford to pay a real C programmer
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.
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).
Radiation is a serious issue and can corrupt the stored program as well as runtime operation. Commercial devices will not last long in space. Even plastics degrade and shrink in space, due to evaporation of volatiles so the connectors will fall apart after a while. Another issue is the launch phase. The vibration of a rocket system is extreme and parts can break off the boards. Conformally coating the electronics and gluing down all heavy parts with RTV will make it last a little longer. Don't expect more than a few weeks of service life, if they even get to orbit in a working condition.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If there was a band of gold circling the earth and the Ariane space truck could go and get a tonne at a time - it would not be worth it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Lightweight stuff, particularly stuff with large cross sections, only last a few months before the orbit decays and it burns up in the atmosphere.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Except those embedded controllers are not shielded from possible radiation.
http://lws-set.gsfc.nasa.gov/space_radiation.html#satellites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening
None of our spacecraft or ground equipment is based on Arduino.