Horn
25th July 2014, 08:10 AM
ALTHOUGH widely used, satellites are expensive to build and to launch. That began to change last year. On November 19th Orbital Sciences, an American company, launched a rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It carried 29 satellites aloft and released them into low-Earth orbit, a record for a single mission. Thirty hours later, Kosmotras, a Russian joint-venture, carried 32 satellites into a similar orbit. Then, in January 2014, Orbital Sciences carried 33 satellites up to the International Space Station (ISS), where they were cast off a month later.
Many of these 94 satellites were built in a standard format known as a CubeSat, a 10cm (4 inch) cube weighing 1.3kg (2.9lb) or less. Some comprised units of two or three cubes. After a decade of fits and starts, during which some 75 CubeSats were launched, satellites of this scale and other small satellites are moving from being experimental kit to delivering useful scientific data and commercial services.
In the next five years or so some 1,000 nanosats, as small satellites of 1-10kg are called, are expected to be launched. Some will be smaller than a CubeSat; others bigger and heavier. Some are like a matryoshka doll: the Russian launch included a satellite that launched eight smaller ones, including four PocketQubes (a 5cm cube format). One of these smaller satellites, developed in Peru, released its own tiny bird.
There will be upsets along the way. In April, as part of a mission by SpaceX, an American company, to resupply the ISS, a small mothership was placed in orbit carrying 104 “sprites” (pictured below). Not much larger than a postage stamp, these contain all the basic elements of a satellite, such as a radio, aerials, a solar cell and instruments. Developed as part of a crowd-funded project called KickSat at Cornell University, each sprite cost just $25 in parts. Their launch was free, courtesy of NASA, the American space agency. The sprites were designed to remain in orbit for a few weeks collecting data before burning up on re-entry. Unfortunately, due to a fault with a timer, the mothership failed to release them before it burned up on re-entry. A second mission is now being planned.
No going back
Despite that setback, the way ahead for satellite technology is clear. “You can now, with a single chip, create most of the capabilities that you would have found in Sputnik, but, of course, orders of magnitude faster,” says Mason Peck, a former chief technologist at NASA and now a professor at Cornell University.
The most ambitious project to date is a flock of 28 nanosats, each one three CubeSats in size (ie, 30cm long). These were carried to the ISS in January and released in batches (pictured at the beginning of this article) through a sort of satellite shooter developed by NanoRacks, an American company. These nanosats came from Planet Labs, a firm based in San Francisco. The satellites now take pictures as they scan the Earth more frequently than traditional ones and at a fraction of the cost, albeit at a lower resolution.
Planet Labs, funded modestly with $65m of private investment, says its nanosats provide much of the performance of a conventional satellite for a fraction of the cost. That reflects a lot of antiquated technology in the space business, much of which can be bettered by the latest off-the-shelf equipment, says Will Marshall, Planet Labs’ boss. There are other cost-saving measures. Satellites are usually built in elaborate clean rooms, but Planet Labs assembles its nanosats in “clean-enough” rooms in its downtown offices. The company expects to put another 100 nanosats into orbit in the next 12 to 18 months.
A few miles away, in another modest San Francisco office, Nanosatisfi is working on its ArduSats. These are open-source platforms and two have already gone up. They will contain an array of sensors and can carry out various missions, such as locating things. More than 250,000 ships, for instance, now broadcast an automatic identification signal than carries about 50 nautical miles. A fleet of small satellites in low orbit could pick up these signals and provide frequent updates about the ships’ positions without the vessels having to use costly dedicated satellite uplinks. Such a system might have been able to track Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which went missing in March.
Farther south in Mountain View, Skybox captures high-resolution imaging data from its first satellite in orbit as it prepares another 23 to launch in the coming years. Some things, though, can be shrunk only so far and larger satellites are needed for a telescope to obtain the higher resolutions required for the firm’s analysis. While Skybox’s minisatellites weigh around 100kg, a fairly common size for small satellites, the firm proved its concept to investors using CubeSats. “Being able to put something in space at very low cost allows you to demonstrate the technology to get more money,” says Dan Berkenstock, one of the company’s founders.
The CubeSat specification came out of the academic world in the late 1990s. Bob Twiggs, then at Stanford University and now at Morehead State University, was frustrated by long delays on a large-satellite programme and set about thinking how much satellite capability might be crammed into a much smaller craft that could be launched cheaply. Space launches usually comprise one or more primary payloads and require ballast to balance the rocket. CubeSats, reasoned Mr Twiggs, could take the place of some of this ballast, so long as they did not jeopardise the main mission. The optimum size Mr Twiggs came up with was based on a box used to display Beanie Babies. Later, with Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnic State University, it was turned into a full specification. Mr Twiggs also developed the 5cm PocketQube, which has a maximum weight of 180 grammes.
Smartphones and other consumer electronics provide a wealth of ready-made technologies
Small satellites benefit from the constant improvements in price and performance being achieved by the consumer-electronics industry, particularly in smartphones. A typical phone is now likely to contain an accelerometer to measure how fast it is moving, a magnetometer to detect magnetic fields and provide a compass reading, a GPS receiver to pick up satellite data, multiple radios, a gyroscope to measure its position, a barometer to detect pressure, two cameras and much more. (at the link)
6601
http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21603240-small-satellites-taking-advantage-smartphones-and-other-consumer-technologies
Many of these 94 satellites were built in a standard format known as a CubeSat, a 10cm (4 inch) cube weighing 1.3kg (2.9lb) or less. Some comprised units of two or three cubes. After a decade of fits and starts, during which some 75 CubeSats were launched, satellites of this scale and other small satellites are moving from being experimental kit to delivering useful scientific data and commercial services.
In the next five years or so some 1,000 nanosats, as small satellites of 1-10kg are called, are expected to be launched. Some will be smaller than a CubeSat; others bigger and heavier. Some are like a matryoshka doll: the Russian launch included a satellite that launched eight smaller ones, including four PocketQubes (a 5cm cube format). One of these smaller satellites, developed in Peru, released its own tiny bird.
There will be upsets along the way. In April, as part of a mission by SpaceX, an American company, to resupply the ISS, a small mothership was placed in orbit carrying 104 “sprites” (pictured below). Not much larger than a postage stamp, these contain all the basic elements of a satellite, such as a radio, aerials, a solar cell and instruments. Developed as part of a crowd-funded project called KickSat at Cornell University, each sprite cost just $25 in parts. Their launch was free, courtesy of NASA, the American space agency. The sprites were designed to remain in orbit for a few weeks collecting data before burning up on re-entry. Unfortunately, due to a fault with a timer, the mothership failed to release them before it burned up on re-entry. A second mission is now being planned.
No going back
Despite that setback, the way ahead for satellite technology is clear. “You can now, with a single chip, create most of the capabilities that you would have found in Sputnik, but, of course, orders of magnitude faster,” says Mason Peck, a former chief technologist at NASA and now a professor at Cornell University.
The most ambitious project to date is a flock of 28 nanosats, each one three CubeSats in size (ie, 30cm long). These were carried to the ISS in January and released in batches (pictured at the beginning of this article) through a sort of satellite shooter developed by NanoRacks, an American company. These nanosats came from Planet Labs, a firm based in San Francisco. The satellites now take pictures as they scan the Earth more frequently than traditional ones and at a fraction of the cost, albeit at a lower resolution.
Planet Labs, funded modestly with $65m of private investment, says its nanosats provide much of the performance of a conventional satellite for a fraction of the cost. That reflects a lot of antiquated technology in the space business, much of which can be bettered by the latest off-the-shelf equipment, says Will Marshall, Planet Labs’ boss. There are other cost-saving measures. Satellites are usually built in elaborate clean rooms, but Planet Labs assembles its nanosats in “clean-enough” rooms in its downtown offices. The company expects to put another 100 nanosats into orbit in the next 12 to 18 months.
A few miles away, in another modest San Francisco office, Nanosatisfi is working on its ArduSats. These are open-source platforms and two have already gone up. They will contain an array of sensors and can carry out various missions, such as locating things. More than 250,000 ships, for instance, now broadcast an automatic identification signal than carries about 50 nautical miles. A fleet of small satellites in low orbit could pick up these signals and provide frequent updates about the ships’ positions without the vessels having to use costly dedicated satellite uplinks. Such a system might have been able to track Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which went missing in March.
Farther south in Mountain View, Skybox captures high-resolution imaging data from its first satellite in orbit as it prepares another 23 to launch in the coming years. Some things, though, can be shrunk only so far and larger satellites are needed for a telescope to obtain the higher resolutions required for the firm’s analysis. While Skybox’s minisatellites weigh around 100kg, a fairly common size for small satellites, the firm proved its concept to investors using CubeSats. “Being able to put something in space at very low cost allows you to demonstrate the technology to get more money,” says Dan Berkenstock, one of the company’s founders.
The CubeSat specification came out of the academic world in the late 1990s. Bob Twiggs, then at Stanford University and now at Morehead State University, was frustrated by long delays on a large-satellite programme and set about thinking how much satellite capability might be crammed into a much smaller craft that could be launched cheaply. Space launches usually comprise one or more primary payloads and require ballast to balance the rocket. CubeSats, reasoned Mr Twiggs, could take the place of some of this ballast, so long as they did not jeopardise the main mission. The optimum size Mr Twiggs came up with was based on a box used to display Beanie Babies. Later, with Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnic State University, it was turned into a full specification. Mr Twiggs also developed the 5cm PocketQube, which has a maximum weight of 180 grammes.
Smartphones and other consumer electronics provide a wealth of ready-made technologies
Small satellites benefit from the constant improvements in price and performance being achieved by the consumer-electronics industry, particularly in smartphones. A typical phone is now likely to contain an accelerometer to measure how fast it is moving, a magnetometer to detect magnetic fields and provide a compass reading, a GPS receiver to pick up satellite data, multiple radios, a gyroscope to measure its position, a barometer to detect pressure, two cameras and much more. (at the link)
6601
http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21603240-small-satellites-taking-advantage-smartphones-and-other-consumer-technologies