Budget Satellite

codejunkie writes: "Check out this story from the Baltimore Sun. Apparently the middies were laughed at when they proposed a budget satellite for 50K. Boeing said it couldn't be done and gave them 250K. Well now they can build five more because the smart minds on the bay have built one."

More information

[Gogo Dodo]

The article didn't provide any external links or even program names. So...

• The satellite is called PCsat [navy.mil] (Prototype Communications Satellite, went cheap on the name, too, I guess)
• Information on the Kodiak Launch Complex [akaerospace.com]
• Information on Starshine III [azinet.com], the "1,500 hand-polished mirrors that will study orbital decay" satellite

$50,000 is too much

[Faies]

Some of you may recall that around January/November there were a few articles discussing the CanSat program [slashdot.org] where high school students launched soda cans to about 12,000 feet. Experiements varied from taking precise location data to flying whole sets of cans in formation on a preprogrammed path (actually, that last experiement was pulled off by several Lockheed Martin engineers getting a little practice).

Several students at my school, Leland High [ed.gov], decided that we should undertake a challenge unlike any other. A goal was set to be the first high school to launch a satellite into outer space and have it communicate back with earth, as vaguely mentioned in a Slashback [slashdot.org]. This particular program is called Cubesat, but only consisted exclusively of universities and private corporations/citizens until we came along.

Much like the engineers in this article, we are using off-the-shelf parts to build our satellite, albeit not from Radio Shack since Radio Shacks don't seem to carry much in San Jose. The antenna we are designing exemplifies the simplicity of the components. In theory, guitar string or the wire used in braces would do the job easily. Our power system is even more simple: d-sized lithium batteries (non-rechargable) linked together.

The parts for our Cubesat will cost less than $5,000, more likely less than $1,000. We are hoping that our prototype will function properly during a test launch on an amateur rocket. After that, designing the antenna configuration (for those who are knowledgable about radio, our cube-shaped satellite forms a poor ground plane and we are also confined to a difficult broadcast frequency) and internal layout (to ensure that our satellite has a perfect center of gravity).

You can reach the webpage for the Leland Cubesat team here [lelandcubesat.org]. Be forewarned, some of the information is slightly out of date at the moment. I will do my best to fix that as soon as possible, but priorities lie elsewhere at the moment.

Re:More information

[Inferno]

For those interested in the communications protocol (APRS) this sat is going to use, check this web site [navy.mil] out. I've been using APRS for about 1.5 years, and it's a blast to play with. :)

The problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is getting the thing into space. Launching a satellite costs something like $50,000 per kilogram. So as long as their satellite weighs less than 4 kilograms, they'll use the whole $250,000 to put the thing into space. But of course, 4 kilograms is only something like 9 pounds. So there's no way they could make it do anything useful at that weight.

Cryptnotic

Satellite list

[Gogo Dodo]

It took awhile, but I tracked down more information. There are four satellites going up:

• Sapphire [stanford.edu] from Stanford and Washington University at St. Louis, the "group of graduate schools" satellite
• PicoSat for the STP (Space Test Program) [af.mil] was built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited [sstl.co.uk], the "one from the Department of Defense"
• PCsat
• Starshine III

Re:The solar panels?

[baptiste]

One of my favorite web stores is a place called ALF Enterprises [alfenterprises.com]. They have all sorts of stuff, FRS radios, alternate power systems, etc. And they sell all sorts of solar panels [alfenterprises.com], some for $25. Neat place and always very helpful when I've ordered from them

UOSat got there first ...

[charlie]

The Baltimore Sun didn't do their research very well -- the University of Surrey, in England, has been doing exactly this since the mid-EIGHTIES, with their UoSAT series of minisatellites.

UoSAT-1, if I remember correctly (details are sparse on the net) was build on a budget of 60,000 as a student project and piggybacked into orbit on an Ariane-4 comsat launch. A number of subsequent UoSATs are part of the OSCAR series of radio amateur satellites, and a commercial spin-off of the University, SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited) build and sell minisats in the 200-500Kg rangefor commercial purchasers; see, for example, this report [astronomynow.com] of the launch of UoSAT-12 (from 1999).