​Christmas is coming up (yes, it's far away but you can already see signs of it on the streets, in the shops etc...) and so is our first international and first Christmas x International special event - Making Interplanetary Internet on 5 Dec 2013,

We have the great pleasure to have Scott from JPL @NASA and IPNSIG speaking about the rare and exciting opportunity to innovate with Delay & Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) and to realise the Interplanetary Internet! And yes, we will talk about DTN together with CubeSATs (those small satellites that cost less than 10k), of course.  

It's going to be our International Special too - the plan is to get together in our locality and to catch the webcast together and then discuss interesting project ideas around interplanetary internet. Feel free to host your local satellite discussion group. 

In London, we will be hosted in Hub Westminister and your London host will have a webex session up and running. 

Not in London? Feel free to organise your local satellite meetup. It'd be easy:
1) Find a space where you can get together
2) the local host need to sign up here so you'll get the webex details closer to date
3) tell people about it
4) tell us about it so we can spread the word, via one or more of the following means: 
  • twitter: #spaceDTN, @citizeninventor; 
  • on our projects page: http://www.citizeninventor.com/submit-project.html; 
  • on our wiki: http://citizeninventor.wikia.com/wiki/CitizenInventor_Wiki 
  • other suggestions welcome, afterall, we are run by community for community! 
5) Get together and stream the webcast, discuss project idea, have beer and tell us about it!

Going solo? If you cannot meetup with a local group, you’re still welcome to sign up! The idea of a local meetup group is to facilitate more project discussions.

​Having been focusing on the low down on hands on space hacks for our last couple of events, on the 20 Nov we had a change of perspective - before we get back to hands on development and wrap up the year with "Making Interplanetary Internet": http://interplanetaryinternet.eventbrite.co.uk/). 

We, together with Satellite Applications Catapult, hosted an intensive whirlwind of 6 space companies telling us about their entrepreneurial stories - the market they saw and the business they've created. To get a well rounded flavour, our speakers are from upstream (spacecrafts) and downstream (businesses that uses satellite data) space sector.

We had ping pong table at the Rainmaking Loft, which was perfect for anyone needed a warm up before the talks commence or an exercise after the pizza! We also had bean bags to cater for those who needed to relax instead. 

Sam from Satellite Applications Catapult started the evening by providing an overview to the exciting growth of the space sector in the UK, followed up by Steph's quick intro to what you can do as citizen for space. In a series of lightening talks, we've cut the chase and dive straight into the exciting innovation and enablers from our speakers:

It was very generous for Satellite Applications Catapult and Rainmaking Loft to sponsor the pizza, beer and venue hosting. Special thanks goes to all those extra pairs of hands that have made a swift tidy up happen - so we can all go to the pub! In line with the usual Citizen Inventor style, we had our extended Q&A in the pub and some of us left the pub only when it kicked us out... 

Finally, for those of us who like toys - watch this space. We're about to get some Christmas presents from Michael from Pocket Spacecraft... stay tuned!

​Our magazine has arrived! Issue One is, guess what, "Space - Exploration by Citizens".

Issue One will track Space exploration and technology developments with citizen participation, mainly covering open sourced, crowd sourced, hands on Space projects and some articles on citizen as astronauts and a hint of space tourism - some pointers to the possibility for us, the citizens, to participate in Space.

Unlike a traditional magazine, this online magazine would be updated as time goes on - subscribe to this issue (button on the front page) and get updates for all things "Space - Exploration by Citizens". Or if you've got news to add, let us know (yea, collaborative effort - without you, we won't be as open)!

Our plan is to keep releasing magazines on all topics citizen science, so stay tuned via twitter @citizeninventor or via rss.