Posts Tagged ‘cubesat’

DIY Friday: ArduSat To Go

Friday, November 1st, 2013

ardusat

From NanoSatisfi, a way to conduct your own in-orbit experiments…

Space has never been closer, which brings with it innumerable possibilities. And these are just a few of the things that we think are pretty neat about it:

1) Affordability. NanoSatisfi is driving down the cost to build, launch and maintain satellites in space—it’s a rocket scientist thing, no big deal. The important part is that it means we can offer access to space, and all of the possibilities therein, at a cost that won’t break anyone’s piggy bank.

2) Simplicity. Space is more than a playground for rocket scientists and astrophysicists—NanoSatisfi is building technology to make exploring and interfacing with space accessible for everyone, starting with ArduSat.

3) Creativity. We’re empowering tomorrow’s explorers with ArduSat, the world’s first open space platform. Whether it’s a dream to map every river of the world, or an aspiration to build the first live-action version of space Invaders the game, we are making the tools available.

And to think it all started with a successful Kickstarter campaign.

ardusat_orbit_w


UKube-1: A Bit of CubeSat Whimsy

Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

Oy, there’s a charging station, mate!

Who else but the Scots and ClydeSpace would send something like this into space? Via Wired UK

UKube-1 is the UK Space Agency’s first CubeSat mission and is being fully assembled by Scottish satellite company ClydeSpace. It now has the added honour of being the world’s ” first functioning pop-art satellite”, with designs by artists Jon Gibson and Amanda White, who run the famous iambit gallery in Los Angeles.

The celestial charging station will hopefully be seen as a gesture of goodwill to would-be space invaders, joke the pair.

“It’s like when a complete stranger at the airport lets you use their wall charger,” says Gibson in an email to Wired.co.uk. “If their original goal was to obliterate our species with a massive plasma canon, perhaps even such a small gesture of kindness will make them reconsider.”

Credit: iam8bit

It’s high time get more creative with their public-facing marketing — as well as to their B2B audiences.

They probably grew up on Monty Python — always good for creative inspiration.


Dawn of the Personal Space Age?

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Interesting project developing at Cornell University, via grad student Zac Manchester: KickSat. Want one? It’s only a few hundred bucks and will transmit text message from space. That’s cool.

They need help…

I need your help to put as many Sprites into orbit as possible to demonstrate that they can be safely launched and operated. A minimum fundraising goal of $30,000 (that’s 100 people sponsoring one Sprite each) will allow us to build, test, and integrate all the hardware for KickSat and the Sprites.

As soon as funding is in place, we’ll apply for a free launch through several programs, such as NASA’s ELaNa CubeSat program. While we are not guaranteed a free launch, there are many such opportunities each year and I believe this project has enough technical appeal and value to NASA to compete with anything out there.

If at least 400 spacecraft-adventurers sponsor Sprites, we’ll be able to use the additional funding to purchase a commercial launch, which will help ensure us a ride into space and allow us to get there sooner than we could relying on a free launch – by early 2013 if all goes well.

If at least 1000 space pioneers join us by sponsoring Sprites, we’ll be able to dramatically improve and shrink our design by getting custom microchips made. If we can do that, then costs could be driven down so that every school or even every school child could one day have their own spacecraft to explore the solar system.

Yeah, it’s pretty small (3.8 cm) and was promoted by Radio Shack not too long ago.