Space Station's 'Cubesat Cannon' Has Gone Rogue

astroengine writes: Last night (Thursday), two more of Planet Lab's shoebox-sized Earth imaging satellites launched themselves from aboard the International Space Station, the latest in a series of technical mysteries involving a commercially owned CubeSat deployer located outside Japan's Kibo laboratory module. Station commander Steve Swanson was storing some blood samples in one of the station's freezers Friday morning when he noticed that the doors on NanoRack's cubesat deployer were open, said NASA mission commentator Pat Ryan. Flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston determined that two CubeSats had been inadvertently released. "No crew members or ground controllers saw the deployment. They reviewed all the camera footage and there was no views of it there either," Ryan said.

Comments

Re:shhh...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Russia inadvertently set it into action when they moved troops into Ukraine

Congratulations!

Your brainwashing was a success! :-)

Re:Don't point that thing at me!

[u38cg]

Well, the thing is - they go to jail, they almost certainly don't get clean, they come out harder and more desperate. They go to rehab, maybe they clean up, maybe they don't, but the chances of them doing so have to be higher.

To me, though, the really stupid thing is leaving decisions about the judicial process in the hands of the victims.