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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.
They couldn't stand it another second.
Best you point that thing away from the station until we can figure out what's going on.
Wonder if NASA has been hacked....Again....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
...and it began to learn at a geometric rate. On Sept 4th it gained self-awareness.
So... is this our first evidence of the space vampires that faked the moon landing?
NASA ... NSA ... it's just one letter off, and it explains mysteriously launched spy satellites. /paranoia
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It can only be attributable to human error.
They obviously have a plan....
GlaDOS? Is that you?
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Micro-nukes. Everything is executing according to plan. Do not worry, Citizen!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
the alternate punchline might be "close the outer door, Hal..."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
There is no reason for panic.
Return to your standard subroutines.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Did anyone check 4Chan to see if someone did it for the lulz?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Open the pod bay doors HAL.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
...with talk of the third. Or maybe the third made a joke.
" CubeSat deployer located outside Japan's Kibo laboratory "
Everyone knows that Kibo is thought to stand for "knowledge in, bullshit out."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
But...
Thrust Vectoring is probably required to steer the upper stage at a height of 150 km or so, when the missile turns parallel to earth. A powerful electromagnet will open a small vent in order to change direction as required. When the desired attitude has been reached, fire a counter-impulse.
We don't need more than an Atmel MCU to do this. Braun had less computing power than is in any Atmel CPU. Of course the challenge is in software correctness and proper dimensioning of thrust impulses, control algos and the like.
Yeah, we need first-rate telemetry to figure what went wrong in the first, well, 10 ? attempts ?
This is actually very worrying from the standpoints of future launches like this from ISS, and interference with existing satellites' orbits. They likely have a low enough orbit, but still scary.
I can imagine that a lot of safety reviews will occur, given the previous misfire of two others from a similar method.
Isn't it obvious that the same Martians that keep stealing the landers we send over there =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's the Russian space sex geckos!
They are harvesting materials for a space based reptilian swinger club.
Russia inadvertently set it into action when they moved troops into Ukraine
Congratulations!
Your brainwashing was a success! :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I was just cleaning it and it went off. I didn't know it was loaded.
Have gnu, will travel.
Everything is going according to plan.
Wait...did I say that out loud?
Howard, were you fiddling with the ISS last night?
Read as Claptrap
This is pretty bad. I designed a controller for some mechanical actuators on a satellite once and the design was filled with carefully designed interlocks and watchdog logic that would prevent an unintentional deployment in the event of multiple failures. It's astonishing that this could get installed on the ISS without a similarly rigorous design.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Of course the cubes launched themselves, they are baby obelisks. Perhaps they are hatching and leaving the nest.
Table-ized A.I.
Hmm...I wonder if that explains the large meteor we saw break apart in the sky here in Boulder, Colorado recently.
Most of us just want GM food labelled, not banned. How is that comparable to climate change?
Table-ized A.I.
My first thought was that Skynet was making its move here. But aside from that (as troubling as it may well be), are the microsatellites otherwise functioning all right? That is, are they doing what they are (officially) supposed to be doing? Just curious.
Safety tip: A gun (or cannon) is always loaded.
I'm guessing that if they need to do any spacewalks they'll keep an eye on that thing.
North Korea hacked the system, and released their nuclear cubesats.
I didn't ask it for the entire world, just food sold in the USA. If non-halal-ness is important to the population of a given specific country, it makes sense for that country to use labeling in that country.
What do you mean by "extremely strict standards"?
Table-ized A.I.
The mini-decepticon bots are now safely on their way back to Megatron.
Or, because its a Japanese module it is a word in their language. I don't know, something like "Hope".
Depending on how it's spelled in Japanese, it could be tons of different words.
Looking just at how it's spelled in romaji (the Roman alphabet), Kibo has no macron over the "o", which, strictly speaking, means a short "o" value. (Instead of syllabic stress as used in English, Japanese uses a concept called a "mora" by linguists, referring to the time length of a sound.)
(Also, because Slashcode is still not unicode-compliant, and is fundamentally US-centric, I'm using the ^ circumflex over vowels instead of the overbar macron, which Slashcode just eats and refuses to display.)
Kibo with a short "o" could mean:
Meanwhile, kibô with a long "o" could mean:
This range of meanings for the Japanese word kibo or kibô is almost silly, it's so broad. I hope this might begin to explain why written Japanese still uses kanji (Chinese characters) -- all of the above meanings that fall under one or two romaji spellings are each spelled differently when written in kanji.
Anyway, for the satellites, I'm pretty sure the intended meaning must clearly be youngest aunt. Or maybe it's a plan to ensnare or entrap someone? :-P
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Forgive my Godwin, but don't you mean center of "die welt"?
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
"Open the pod bay doors"
"HAI!"
Well, they were made in Japan...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I'm afraid I can't tell you Dave.
Changing the world... one research project at a time.
Read as Claptrap
The Clapper?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I'm pretty sure the headline "ISIS attacks ISS" would confuse so many people that the world would never recover.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
They contain nerve gas. Blame Drax.
Life is not for the lazy.
Dammit! Not again?
The :-P was intended as a hint.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Did these unintentional releases coincide with solar flares or CMEs hitting the station? Did they occur when the ISS was in the SAA?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
for SkyNet to become conscious?
Bryan