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:Don't point that thing at me!

[Jane Q. Public]

Best you point that thing away from the station until we can figure out what's going on.

Those damned satellite thieves are getting bolder every day.

Note to future astronauts: be sure to roll the windows up and take your keys when you leave the module.

SkyNet Deployment

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Micro-nukes. Everything is executing according to plan. Do not worry, Citizen!

Re:Don't point that thing at me!

[bobbied]

Yea, this isn't rocket science we are doing here... Wait...

Where are the interlocks?

[wiredlogic]

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.