• Home
  • Blog
Citizen Inventor

CubeSATs launched with SpaceX

18/4/2014

 

​There much to get excited about SpaceX's resupply mission that has just launched a few hours ago. 

The count down started at T-60. After lift-off, It took 10 minutes to reach the orbit before Falcon9 separates from Dragon. Dragon is expected to reach the ISS on Sunday and NASA is expected a space walk on Sunday too. Dragon is not only taking 2089kg of cargo up to ISS, but it will also be taking 1583kg of cargo back after it's due to stay for 3 weeks. 

It's going to get busy with 5 CubeSats being launched:
  • ALL-STAR, the Agile Low-cost Laboratory for Space Technology Acceleration and Research
  • KickSat: a kickstarter project to deploy a constellation of 104 “Sprites” or “ChipSats. Sprites are essentially a doubled sided electronic chip (printed circuit board) with programmable microcontroller, sensors, radio (operating at 437MHz) for communication, and solar cells for power. These Sprites are essentially personal satellites. Personal as in personal computer: One of the sprites has been developed by a great community in the British Interplanetary Society, which Citizen Inventors has heard from in our second meetup!
  • PhoneSat: the 5th one now, it's a technology demonstrator for NASA’s planned Edison Demonstration of Smallsat Networks (EDSN) constellation. 
  • SporeSat: to study how the plant ceratopteris richardii grows in space under artificial gravity. This is not the only plant related payload. The other plant related payload is not a CubeSat, it's about the size of a microwave: Veggies (NASA's veg-01 experiment) is bringing up fresh plant to be grown in the ISS and to be studied under microgravity. Fresh salad in space one day, fancy that! 
  • TestSat-Lite (TSAT): to study the use of satellite communications to relay data to ground stations.

Did I say it's going to get busy? It's not just for the scientist - but you too. Zac from KickSat has been putting out a call/contest to everyone on earth to participate in listening to the sprites signals. A tweet from BIS has just came in saying "@g8fjg has received signal from #KickSat CubeSat from 22KM East of London. Short bursts recorded and another satellite in the same orbit."

And for those who would rather watch, NASA is beaming video down, yes, beaming! With OPAL (Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science) on board of the cargo, NASA is expecting to laser beam video to earth. Why laser beam? "OPALS will demonstrate up to 50 megabits per second, and future deep space optical communication systems will provide over one gigabits per second from Mars." - source from NASA. NASA hopes to boost the connection speed by 50 times! 

And of course, this missions is developing towards a reusable launcher, Falcon9 v.1.1 could show some landing legs on return. 

A detail of the launch schedule and the content of the cargo is described here and here. 


Exoskn - An open source space suit project

11/4/2014

 

​Over the weekend of Space App Challenge 2014, some 671 space projects were born to answer 54 challenges over 95 locations - that is without counting the 75 virtual project's physical location! Wow. The 54 challenges were in 5 themes: Technology in Space, Human Space Flight, Asteroids, Earth Watch and Robotics.

It sure was hard to pick a challenge to do out of the many, but when the clock strike 9 in the UK, Exoskn - an open source space suit project was born in the virtual location to answer to Kennedy Space Center's space wearable challenge, alongside 28 more projects across the world. It was one of the 75 virtual projects that got nominated for global judging but that wasn't the end. It's now making an open call for participants, looking to expand and keep moving forward with wearable electronic tinkerers, fashion designers, material scientist... name your role and skills!

Here is where it got to after 36 hours (excuse the speaker, she hasn't really got any clear mind to speak by then...) :

exoskn from Citizen Inventor on Vimeo.

    Subscribe

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Amsat
    Armature Radio
    Bio In Space
    British Interplanetary Society
    Co-learn
    Conference
    Cubesat
    Cubesats
    Disaster Monitoring
    Earth
    ESA
    Events
    Exoskn
    Festival
    Field Trips
    Flood
    Galactic Fete
    Gis
    Hackathon
    IdeaTODO
    Kicksat
    Launch
    Magazine
    Mapping
    Money
    Multi-disciplinary
    Open Data
    Open Hardware
    Open Software
    Pocket Spacecraft
    Ponder Aloud
    Project
    Research
    Satellite Application Catapult
    Space
    Space Exploration
    Space Expo
    Space Gambit
    #spacemeetup
    Space Suit
    Space Town Hall
    SpaceUpUK
    SpaceX
    Sprites
    STEAM
    Sustainability
    Talks
    Volunteering
    Wearable

    Archives

    December 2016
    February 2016
    October 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Blog