13 Pico-Satellites to Launch June 28th

leighklotz writes "The CalPoly CubeSat Program announced a launch date for its 13 amateur satellites: June 28, 2006 at 19:39:11Z, from the Kazakstan Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Russian DNEPR-1LV rocket. The satellites are made from a kit, and are 10cm cubes." Read on for more info, including links to many of the individual satellite projects.

leighklotz continues: "There are also pictures of 14 satellites and info about some of them:

• ION, University of Illinois
• RINCON, University of Arizona
• ICE Cube 1, Cornell University
• KUTESat [also] University of Kansas
• nCube nCube Norweigian University of Science and Technology
• HAUSAT-1 Hankuk Aviation University
• SEEDS Nihon University
• CP1 and CP2 Cal Poly
• AeroCube 1 The Aerospace Corporation
• Voyager University of Hawaii
• ICE Cube 2 Cornell University

These folks have a list of ongoing CubeSat projects. And as always AMSAT is a good organization to join if you have any interest in using or building your own satellites."

Cheap is in the eye of the beholder

[IntelliAdmin]

Wow. After looking through their price sheet it looks like you could build your own cubesat for about $20,000 US. I guess inexpensive is a relative term - still really cheap compared to the prices of a regular satellite. I wonder how much it costs them to get it up in the air.

Windows Admin Tools [intelliadmin.com]

97.4 degree inclination??? Why?

[lecithin]

forcasted orbital elements below. Why are they using a 97.43 degree inclination?

P-POD A
1 99999U 06179.82920000 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 00002
2 99999 097.4300 088.0700 0022000 210.1300 328.3600 15.15090000000016

P-POD B
1 99999U 06179.82920000 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 00002
2 99999 097.4300 088.0700 0035000 210.1495 328.6600 15.12640000000013

P-POD C
1 99999U 06179.82920000 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 0000
2 99999 097.4300 088.0700 0048000 210.1537 328.8600 15.10180000000011

P-POD D
1 99999U 06179.82920000 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 00002
2 99999 097.4300 088.0700 0060000 210.1680 329.0500 15.07710000000019

P-POD E
1 99999U 06179.82920000 .00000000 00000-0 00000-0 0 00002
2 99999 097.4300 088.0700 0073000 210.1857 329.2300 15.05210000000012

Involvement and Interest

[Puff of Logic]

It's always interesting to see space stuff done on a smaller scale. In some ways, it's almost more interesting. For example, while the ISS is cool, chucking a spacesuit out of the airlock to make an impromptu satellite was satisfying on some other level than I usually find, say, the latest Hubble shot. There's probably some key insight here, but I'm too tired to actually engage my brain more fully.

Re:Cheap is in the eye of the beholder

[kfg]

. . .about $20,000 US. I guess inexpensive is a relative term. . .

$20,000 is where "cheap" ends in the violin market. The sort of thing you might send your kid to college with, or have made as a "cheap" copy of your "good" violin (a common practice for insurance purposes). I was looking at a mandolin last year that was made in the year I was born, in the city I was born in. It was going for $25,000. Just some bits of carved wood, baroque era tech.

Yes, it's all relative.

KFG

Errr...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't anyone else curious as to why the headline mentions 13 sattelites, and the article mentions 14?

Not that I don't expect such things from Slashdot, but... :)