Android smartphone to control satellite in orbit
February 27, 2013
(Credit: Surrey Satellite Technology)
A satellite with an Android Google Nexus One smartphone at its heart is now orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 785 kilometers.
Called STRaND-1, the UK’s first cubesat, the satellite’s incorporation of a phone is a bold attempt to test how well cheap, off-the-shelf consumer electronics handle the harsh temperature variations and microchip-blasting cosmic radiation of space, New Scientist reports.
The shoebox-sized satellite includes a Linux-based computer to maintain its orientation by controlling miniature plasma thrusters. But control will, at various points in the mission, be switched to the Android phone’s circuitry to see how its consumer-level electronics copes.
The phone also carries four Android apps written by the winners of a Facebook competition to fly “your app in space”.
No word if the tiny cubesat plans to phone home. — Editor
Comments (11)
by M
“plasma thrusters”
Since when we have this technology?
by Durabys
Most sci-fi so-called “plasma thrusters” are in fact fusion mini-torches. We already have plasma thrusters though.
by asiwel
:-}
by erichlof
At least they didn’t name their new satellite STRaND-id
by Gorden Russell
That orbit is almost 500 miles up. That far out it will stay in orbit for a long time.
It’s more amazing to me that the cube sat can fit plasma thrusters in a space the size of a shoebox. Back when I was a schoolboy they said a plasma engine needed temperatures up to 4000 degrees F. I’d like to know where the power comes for such a temperature in such a small package. I can only imagine that it takes a nickel-chrome heater the size of an automobiles cigarette lighter.
Gotta go search this out.
by Gorden Russell
Here’s news. Though your microwave oven operates at a
frequency of 2.45 GHz, according to an article from Boise State, they have a ceramic plasma thruster with an antenna that operates at 1,000 MHz ( I don’t know why they just didn’t say 1.0 GHz). I get the drift that they inductively heat the argon gas propellant.
Still, to power all this, they must have solar panels that fold out from all sides of this shoebox-sized satellite. I am guessing that these thrusters need as much power as your kitchen microwave to heat up the argon gas.
The article is here:
http://news.boisestate.edu/update/2011/12/06/boise-state-engineers-create-miniature-plasma-source-for-thrusters/
by Ian Clarke
Blimey Gorden, when I was a schoolboy, I was being told to watch my hands near the Bunsen burner. Meanwhile, you were being taught about the operating temperatures of plasma engines? Good grief, I had such a deprived childhood. :-(
by Bri
What? You didn’t get to handle some plutonium?( just kidding)
by Bri
You don’t realize that’s Flash Gordon. He’s traveled back from the future.
by Jackus
Where are you from? And how old are you?
In some schools in Canada they use math textbooks from the 1950s.
Not sure about science.
by MatthewQ
Does the math still work?