NASA Goes Bargain Basement With New Satellite

coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA has announced a new low-cost satellite that could be ideal for those who wish to get into space quickly and (relatively) inexpensively. "The Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT) is 39.5 inches in diameter — not much larger than an exercise ball. It is hexagonally shaped and clocks in at a little less than 200 Lbs. It can carry a payload up to 110 Lbs. [...] NASA said FASTSAT is just the right size for earth observing missions, space science missions, and technology demonstrations. 'We think we can do whole missions for less than $10 million instead of the traditional $100s of millions, and that includes the launch vehicle, the satellite, and the widget you want to test,' said Marshall Space Flight Center's Edward 'Sandy' Montgomery in a release."

not all rosy...

[MrAndrews (456547)]

The Russians aren't too happy about this new side to NASA... they're trying to distance themselves from the whole idea [pttbt.ca]...

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[Creepy Crawler (680178)]

That site is a new Onion.

And its not even funny..

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[king-manic (409855)]

That site is a new Onion.

And its not even funny..

Color me foolish. It's sort of a deep pink.

Is it just me

[COMON$ (806135)]

Or did anyone else have the vision of a giant slingshot for the launch?

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[Selfbain (624722)]

I had assumed they were just going to pray and hope God launched it for them.

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[eggnoglatte (1047660)]

I see you are a proponent of Intelligent Rocket Design (TM).

More like cannon

[vlad_petric (94134)]

Jules Verne most likely first imagined it, and Gerard Bull designed it: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/babongun.htm [astronautix.com]

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[4D6963 (933028)]

Yeah, too bad neither a cannon nor a slingshot could effectively put anything into orbit on their own.

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[marcansoft (727665)]

Cubesats? 10x10x10cm, $65,00080,000 each. 5x5x5 seems pretty damn small to me (1/8th the volume of a cubesat), do those things exist? That would barely be even trackable, and fitting a gyro, electronics, a decent transmitter, a battery, and the solar panels into that thing would be an interesting exercise.

I'm on Florida Tech's FUNSAT team this year. And I'll make damn sure we have at least one funny easter egg or two in the software/transmissions, if we end up winning and making the thing.

Miniaturization

[eviloverlordx (99809)]

It'll be interesting to see if this drives a trend towards smaller, COTS parts for these satellites. Personally, I'm excited about this. This could be the first step towards an all-in-one probe (a la Star Trek) like device.

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[by Anonymous Coward]

There is already a trend. Surrey Satellite Technology [sstl.co.uk] and the University of Surrey have been building and launching micro satellites since 1981, often using COTS components.

It's a booming commercial area.

Does it run on Android?

[Jennifer York (1021509)]

Sorry, I couldn't resist. All of you Google fan boys calm down...

Didn't the faster cheaper thing prove out to be extremely risky? That model resulted in numerous failures on Mars, ultimately to be abandoned and real space agency calibre test and development resume as a result.

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[Tuoqui (1091447)]

Yeah just make sure these satellites are engineered to last 6 months only.

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[sm62704 (957197)]

And don't confuse inches with centimeters, or install the chute thrusters backwards.

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[Overzeetop (214511)]

"Better, faster, cheaper" was tried. They also tried the "take more risks, do more science". The problem with the first was that cheaper was the immutable part of that closed equation. The problem with the second was that risk taking was valued but failure was punished.

Neither produced any forward motion.

This, too, will fail. Simple reason: space research and exploration is a custom, one-of-a-kind endeavor at this stage. You can't make a "standard" bus because as soon as you do, somebody will need more [p

Obligatory

[zappepcs (820751)]

When I was a kid, I did not know that playing with estes model rockets was actually making me a rocket scientist!!

On the lighter side, this is just one more step toward open source styled science. I'm glad to see it. It will slowly break the stranglehold that big military business has on such ventures, and hopefully spread the wealth around a little bit better.

Data Costs?

[schwep (173358)]

Data costs tend to be almost as much as the actual hardware since there are only a few locations that are prime for beaming data down - and they're in Alaska or the far North.

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[khallow (566160)]

I don't understand your question. Are you asking if the cost of communicating with the satellite is going to be more than the cost of the satellite? That would depend on how one does it. Any place the satellite overflies on a regular basis could do, say if you only need to communicate every few days or so.

Oh, great

[Dripdry (1062282)]

Now for a decent sized marketing budget, I can look in a telescope and see "Eat at Joe's" plastered up in the heavens?

SpaceX

[TopSpin (753)]

Elon Musk intends his Falcon rockets to put ~500 lbs in LEO for ~$8 million. Two failures to date and another attempt coming up early next year (SpaceX dates being rather fluid.) Of course this is only the cost of the launch, not the experiment/science etc. Anyhow, the NASA numbers seem reasonable.

Ideal launch provider

[iamlucky13 (795185)]

First of all, I wanted to question whether anybody knew if they had any customers for this satellite bus? The two photos looked more like non-flight testbeds than shiny, thermally controlled satellites we're used to seeing.

Second, does anyone know if a magnetic orientation system has been used on any satellites in the past? Obviously, the rotation rates that can can be achieved by such a system must be pretty low, especially if the satellite has no moving parts to extend booms, so I'm curious what sort of payloads this bus is useful for.

Third, one of my first thoughts is it sounds like they might be specifically targeting themselves at SpaceX. With the 1400 pound LEO capacity of the Falcon 1 for $8 million, it's the only rocket that could put one of these things (perhaps two) into space for the $10 million estimated in the article. Even the current low cost contender in the US, the Orbital Sciences Minotaur, which reuses SRB's from retired Peacekeeper missiles, costs over $12 million per rocket, not counting payload integration and launch, as I understand it.

Lastly, the article says this satellite would be a competitor with the Falcon 1, which is obviously false. The Falcon 1 is a launch vehicle. FASTSAT is a satellite. They go together, not compete.

The new unit of measurement

[michaelmalak (91262)]

39.5 inches in diameter -- not much larger than an exercise ball

When did exercise balls become the univerally known cultural unit of measurement? In the past, it would have been a yardstick, but alas that has given way to the tape measure. Actually, mentioning a yardstick would have been a tautology, and so wouldn't have even been mentioned. So really, it must be a matter of kids not knowing physical sizes due to playing with videogames instead of working with their hands. Or, rather, if there's any work to be done, it is to be done with an exercise ball.

Re:The new unit of measurement

[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

That didn't bother me as much as saying that it "clocks in" at 200 pounds. I know, I know, it's just a metaphor, but I really don't like the idea of measuring weight with a clock, given NASA's past unit conversion problems...

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[geekoid (135745)]

Well, it's clocks in at 200 pounds based on its velocity.

Clearly clocks is a time reference, presumable for our'now' Once the thing approaches that speed of light, clocks will slow and it will 'clock in' at a higher weight..

Damn it, I know there is a funny science joke sitting their, but hell if I can find it.

Re: 39.5 Inches = about 1 Meter

[denis-The-menace (471988)]

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=1+meter+in+inches&btnG=Google+Search&meta= [google.ca]

It's amazing how Americans don't want to use the "M" word

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[EaglemanBSA (950534)]

Most Americans don't understand things in meters. I could very accurately describe to you how big a few thousandths of an inch is, but it would take me some thinking to show you what a millimeter looks like, because I do all my engineering work in inches. It has more to do with our established infrastructure than anything else (go ahead, find me a meterstick at a local store...good luck with that). Conversions don't really get hairy until you're doing a thermodynamics problem anyways.

How about 1 Meter in diameter?

[Radon360 (951529)]

Well, I guess they could have just said it was "about 1 meter in diameter" but I suppose someone figured that would be pretty meaningless to most Americans since we generally don't use the metric system in this country.

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[JazzLad (935151)]

Like /.'ers know the size of an exercise ball?

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[discontinuity (792010)]

39.5 inches in diameter -- not much larger than an exercise ball

When did exercise balls become the univerally known cultural unit of measurement?

At least they didn't say that it was 0.01097 football fields in diameter!

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[P3NIS_CLEAVER (860022)]

Obviously you are unaware that you can compress the Library Of Congress into the area occupied by an exercise ball if it is converted to neutrons, you insensitive dolt!

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[sm62704 (957197)]

When did exercise balls become the univerally known cultural unit of measurement?

More importantly, what's this "excersize" thing? How can I excersize my balls when I almost never get laid? Please help this poor old nerd!

-mcgrew

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[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

I'd partly agree, it's easier to think of something in comparison to an object in equivalent volume than try to think of a 1m sphere without any context. A meter stick is just one dimension.

Magnetic Control?

[Kristoph (242780)]

from the article ....

Magnets provide its attitude control instead of jets, so there are no propellants onboard to explode.

How do they manage this?

]{

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[jandrese (485)]

I imagine they are pushing against the ionosphere or something like that. It's just enough thrust to keep you from falling out of orbit and it comes "for free" from the solar panels bolted on the side. I imagine your payload is under a fairly strict energy budget, but that's hardly unusual for satellites.

Re:Magnetic Control?

[icebrain (944107)]

Earth has a magnetic field, and if you place another magnet in the field, oriented differently, a torque results. The torque is very low, so it takes a while to have a noticeable effect, but if all you're doing is pointing at the earth, it's sufficient.

Generally, you'll see the magnets either on the ends of long booms (for satellites intended to stay oriented in one direction) or as electromagnets (for more pointable spacecraft).

Nearly GNU naming

[niceone (992278)]

FASTSAT Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT)

There, fixed it.

Article Errors

[teeks99 (849132)]

There's a sentence in the article that doesn't make sense and I wanted to clarify it for those reading.

These dimensions place FASTSAT squarely in the microsatellite category where it will compete with such as SpaceX's Falcon 1 and Kistler's K-1, NASA said.

Except that SpaceX and Kistler both make ROCKETS not satellites. The competitors for FASTSAT would be companies like Surrey and Orbital Sciences.

However, (what I think the author probably meant to write) is that SpaceX's Falcon 1 (and Kistler's K-1 if it hadn't just been cut by NASA) would be great rockets to launch a small payload like this. Falcon 1 tops out at a few thousand pounds, so you could cheaply load a few of these into a rocket. For $7million for the rocket and a few million more for each satellite you could send up several serious NASA missions.

Not as good as it seems.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Surrey Satellites/University of Surrey in the UK have been making micro sats for decades. (customers include Department of Defence, Banking consortia, ESA, etc etc)

Their second satellite UoSat-2 was build in less 11 months, and they're more than happy to take commercial orders for satellites costing way less than 4 million dollars and still they can make a profit on it, launch included!

Heck this micro satellite isn't even small by today's standards! Give it a couple of years and we'll see satellites that are the size of a large coffee cup. How do I know? My colleagues are building them!

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[LingNoi (1066278)]

You're a brit you should know the deal by now.. English build the tech, Americans take all the glory.

Attitude Control

[GraWil (571101)]

Noting that accurate pointing of on-board sensors is vital for most Earth and astronautical observations, I'd be interested to read about the precision and accuracy of the attitude control system. The A-train satellites are each the size of a Ford van and have multiple spinning wheels, torquers, star trackers and gyros to sense the spacecraft attitude and maintain the correct orientation. Using only mag rods, nulling any residual attitude errors will take quite a while and I'm not sure you'd ever have a 'stable' platform.

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[teeks99 (849132)]

I agree that the magnetic alignment system will take a long time to null out any perturbations from launch.
I'm not convinced that the platform wouldn't eventually stabilize though. Especially since there's no moving parts. All it has to deal with is some atmospheric drag (which I believe) is pretty constant, and possibly some solar (going from the light side to the dark side) expansion/contraction. Am I missing something?
Even if it was stable, I don't believe there would be ANY pointing capability.

I believe I speak for Slashdot when I say...

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

...a WHAT ball?

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[xaxa (988988)]

Or even "a metre". Try converting 39.5 inches into metres and you'll see where the number came from. Then ask why it wasn't written "1 metre" in the first place...

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[P3NIS_CLEAVER (860022)]

5 gallons of Mountain Dew

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[sm62704 (957197)]

Disclaimer for those with mod points: This post is NOT intended as a flame or flamebait.

If you want good karma, stop worrying about karma. And never use the word "troll" or "flamebait" because your post will be modded "troll" or "flamebait" (I think I just got modded... never mind). Try for insightful and you'll get "funny" (no mod points). Try for "funny" and likely as not you will be modded "interesting".

More on topic, yes, there a lot more Top Cat's [tripadvisor.com] than there are McDonalds Corporations [google.com], but there are en

Re:Let me know when I can get one at the Dollar St

[OldeTimeGeek (725417)]

PBS's Wired Science magazine had a great segment [pbs.org] (warning: video)on all of the things that someone has to do to launch a satellite - their example was a telecommunications satellite. It's a good watch if you want to know exactly why $10 million is not exactly a bad price....

Re:Let me know when I can get one at the Dollar St

[evil agent (918566)]

Perhaps if every slashdot reader contributed $10, we could get one. The highest rated comment ideas would be placed into a slashdot poll to decide what to do with it.

I vote for geostationary orbit over Natalie Portman's house.

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[Sciros (986030)]

Man I do that NOW, why wait 10 years?

Re:Number one cost is sky high salaries ...

[khallow (566160)]

Out of curiousity, what do you think is a "sky high" salary and why do you think someone in NASA is being paid that much?

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[Zenaku (821866)]

It would make perfect sense if you would just spend a few parsecs thinking about it.