Mini satellites... Could you have your own?
A couple of days ago I happened to be talking to Dr, Elias Aboutanios, who was visiting us at Mestrelab. In amongst many other things, Elias was telling me about the Cubesats project.
For me this was amazingly cool, as I am pretty sure it was the first time I have spoken directly to someone who has put a satellite into space. The thing that amazes me most about this is how doable it is nowadays. A few years ago, the cost of developing, making and launching a satellite would have been completely prohibitive to anyone except a few national agencies. Nowadays, however, this is very tractable, at least for Universities and other research organisations. We are getting to a point in which the economics of space research can even allow ingenious individuals to have their own space research projects. That, for me, is pretty amazing.
Elias' satellite was 3D printed, it was sent up to the ISS in a container with a number of other things as part of a commercial space launch and it was put in orbit from the ISS with a spring! Yes, a spring. Amazing. It then got lost, could not be communicated with and was eventually recontacted and reconnected from Earth!
If you are curious about this technology. or about the story of Elias' satellite, here are a few links you may find interesting:
You should start with this ABC program. You could also watch this short video and this interview.
I think for the first time in human history you can say that a child who is currently in school and is interested in space has a better than average chance, with a bit of determination, to be involved in space exploration by the time they get to Uni. That is just fantastic. When I was growing up, you had to be a big country to be able to do that!
Totally unrelated, but something else really cool you could read about today... Self assembling semiconductors... Wow...
For me this was amazingly cool, as I am pretty sure it was the first time I have spoken directly to someone who has put a satellite into space. The thing that amazes me most about this is how doable it is nowadays. A few years ago, the cost of developing, making and launching a satellite would have been completely prohibitive to anyone except a few national agencies. Nowadays, however, this is very tractable, at least for Universities and other research organisations. We are getting to a point in which the economics of space research can even allow ingenious individuals to have their own space research projects. That, for me, is pretty amazing.
Elias' satellite was 3D printed, it was sent up to the ISS in a container with a number of other things as part of a commercial space launch and it was put in orbit from the ISS with a spring! Yes, a spring. Amazing. It then got lost, could not be communicated with and was eventually recontacted and reconnected from Earth!
If you are curious about this technology. or about the story of Elias' satellite, here are a few links you may find interesting:
You should start with this ABC program. You could also watch this short video and this interview.
I think for the first time in human history you can say that a child who is currently in school and is interested in space has a better than average chance, with a bit of determination, to be involved in space exploration by the time they get to Uni. That is just fantastic. When I was growing up, you had to be a big country to be able to do that!
Totally unrelated, but something else really cool you could read about today... Self assembling semiconductors... Wow...
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