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Space

Satellites on the Cheap 103

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-cool dept.
An anonymous reader writes "At a cost of just $50,000 - including plane tickets to the Alaska launch site - it was constructed using off-the-shelf parts not designed to withstand the rigors of space. Its life span was only expected to be a few months. Six students put together the satellite last year after a three-year research and design project made possible with a grant from Boeing Co. The Department of Defense (news - web sites) Space Test Program approved the project and put it on a launch list"" Beats doing the egg drop.
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Satellites on the Cheap More

Satellites on the Cheap

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  • Uncle (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Lawrence_Bird ( 67278 )
    How many times must we read about this on /. ???

  • The $50,000 is a misnomer (Score:5, Informative)

    by PoiBoy ( 525770 ) <brian@poihol d i ngs.com> on Thursday January 24, 2002 @08:29AM (#2893817) Homepage
    This $50,000 price tag was just for the parts to actually build the satellite. It does not include the value of the grant from Boeing for three years of development time, nor does it reflect the salaries of engineers to do it. Moreover, the article did not give details about how the satellite was in orbit; and I would bet that if a person wanted to shoot his own satellite into space, the price would be prohibitive.

    Sure, a bunch of amateurs being able to develop a satellite on a shoestring budget makes for an interesting story, but to suggest that there will soon be a supply of reliable, ultra-cheap satellites is a stretch.

    • Re:The $50,000 is a misnomer (Score:5, Informative)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @09:14AM (#2893957) Homepage
      Actually they went to Boeing, and said- hey we need $50,000; Boeing looked at the plan, it looked good, so they patted them on the head, and gave them $250,000, figuring they would need it- and then the students came in on their original budget...

      So, the university now has funding for the next 4 years.

      There were no salaries- this satellite was built using student labour.

      The satellite was launched for free of course, there was space on one of the launchers for it, and they weren't charged AFAIK.

      Incidentally, radio hams have put their own satellite up... so its not totally out of the question for privately funded groups.
      • Incidentallly hams have put up over 30 satellites over the years. Most of them have been launched vy AMSAT, a privately funded organization of hams that work to put up satellites for the ham radio community. Also most of the newer satellite technology has come from the success and failures of hams.

        Dave
        KA3TNY
      • This $50,000 price tag was just for the parts to actually build the satellite

      Shut up! Everyone knows that engineers work on space stuff for free because it's so cool, and NASA shoots stuff up out of the goodness of its publically funded heart for the same reason. Limitless cheap space exploitatation is coming Real Soon Now, just as it has been for the past 10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80/90/100 (insert your own number) years.

      Seriously, you're quite right. Much of the cost of a satellite goes into testing and redundancy to make sure that once you've added to the massive expense of shooting the thing up there, it damn well works. You can lose the entire cost of a project based on using a ten cent diode rather than a fifty cent diode. Cutting corners is rarely a good gamble.

  • Off topic, but started on topic. (Score:5, Informative)

    by DoorFrame ( 22108 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @08:31AM (#2893822) Homepage
    I went to look up a few older stories on slashdot which, as I recalled, were the same story as this one. But I recall reading the other one's months ago. I was curious if this was merely a repeat so I scrolled to the bottom of the Slashdot main page and used the SEARCH option.

    Great, I thought, I'll just search for +Boeing +Student +Satelite or something of that sort.

    I tried this.

    And I was once again reminded, when I reviewed the results, that Slashdot, for some reason, doesn't have boolean searches. Now, for a site which champions Google "the home of the AND search" .com [google.com], I'm confused as to why this functionality would not have been added to slashdot by now. It makes it next to impossible to find older stories, because instead of stories about Boeing AND students AND satelites, I find stories about Boring OR students OR satelites.

    This, as you can imagine, is not terribly helpful. It turns out that there are an awful lot of stories about Boeing or students or satlelites.

    So, to recap, I'm pretty sure this story is a repeat (I'm sure someone else will go to the trouble of posting the exact references), but I'm damned positive that the Slashdot/Slash search feature is only marginally useful at its best, and outright useless at its worse.

    Begin the down-modding if you must.

  • first satellite (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mgblst ( 80109 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @08:31AM (#2893823) Homepage
    I wonder how much the very first satellite, sputnik would have cost? Surely it wouldnt be
    that expensive to build the thing, just costs
    alot to get it up there?
    • Brooklyn artist Gregory Green built a replica [wired.com] of Sputnik 1 a few years ago, though I'm fairly certain that he never managed to find the money it would have taken to launch the thing into orbit.

    • Re:first satellite (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Cerrian ( 545606 )
      In regards to sputnik, it was essentially only a simple reciever and transmitter, built with parts that we could probably obtain today at Radio Shack.

      Launching that sucker is a whole other financial issue. Materials alone for the rocket must have taken a nice gouge out of their alloted budget. Then you consider the years of R&D, Support and Logistics, and prior failed launches. At the time nobody really cared what the payload did once in space (except for military purposes) all they wanted to know was how high can we the bloody thing in the sky before it starts come crashing down (aka ballistic missile)

      Hell, lauching from a Pegasus rocket today still costs a handful of million of dollars and it's one of the cheaper rockets in terms of cost per mass.

    • The cost of the parts for the first amateur satellite (OSCAR-1) is widely quoted at $26.00. This excludes labour costs. The launch was free - Uncle Sam (i.e. taxpayers) picked up the tab. Even today the going rate is on the order of 5 figures per kilo to low Earth orbit. That's in U.S. dollars, by the way...

      The most expensive component of modern satellites is usually the solar panels. Because of this, many low-end projects use batteries, run for a few weeks, and then they die.

      The Powers That Be look favourably on such satellites, since they will automatically turn themselves off. when the batteries run down. No human intervention required.

      ...laura

  • you could get everything you need at home depot... I can see the commercials now.... "Excuse me, do you have an antennae for a satellite?" "Yes sir, follow me to hardware" Announcer's voice: Come on into Home Depot, we have everything for your Orbital needs... Seriously though, this is awesome. NASA could maybe learn something from these "kids" eh?

  • The article shows it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by nikolas ( 35223 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @08:34AM (#2893834)
    ...there`s no such thing as a free launch!

    Bruuuuhahahah...

  • Ohboyohboyohboy, I love Karma (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rbeattie ( 43187 ) <russ@russellbeattie.com> on Thursday January 24, 2002 @08:38AM (#2893844) Homepage
    You can find a picture of the satelite and a bunch of info about the project here. http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/pcsat.html [usna.edu]

    -Russ

  • Don't we have enough junk in space? (Score:4, Funny)

    by swagr ( 244747 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @08:39AM (#2893845) Homepage
    Somewhere (maybe here) scientists predicted that with the vast ammount of crap zipping about up there, the right type of collision (say bewteen a chunk of solar panel and a sattelite) could cause a chain reaction that would destroy every sattelite in orbit, and make it impossible to launch more.

  • life span (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @08:45AM (#2893867) Journal
    ``If we get lucky with radiation, it could last three years,'' said Darrell Boden, a professor in the aerospace engineering department.

    Watch, it will be up there still working ten or twenty years from now when it finally falls into the atmosphere.

  • I wonder if technology will progress enough that by the time my son is in high school (Yes, I realize this was a bunch of university students), he'll be designing and building RF(something better?) controlled selfpowered jets and the whatnot with hacked guidance systems. The coolest things I ever did in high school were with computers, and they weren't exactly part of any class. But When it comes down to it, I almost want to go back to school JUST for all of the cool projects I could be involved in! Regardless, way to go to the students who got to do this, and succeeded!

  • blah? (Score:1)

    by perky ( 106880 )
    Seen this one before [slashdot.org]
  • History Repeats it self on /.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/08/232920 7 [slashdot.org]

  • I wolud just love to sell my wifes car to get myself a sattelite of my own. I could even convince my buddies to sell their wifes/girlfriends cars to get that system built. :)

    The big question is: How much higher is the price to get that thing up into an orbit where we constantly have access to it. I reccon, this might be a lot more expensive, but I would just love to have a communications-channel on my own...

    Dont wake me up, please...
  • It's nice to know that a good team of inventive and resourcefull guys can do a test sattelitte. But the $50,000 seems to be a minus figure: minus the cost of putting it in orbit, minus the human resources, minus the grant money, minus ...
    br Thought, nice going folks!

  • Light on info (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dohcvtec ( 461026 )
    Neither this article, nor the previous one posted on /. mention what the USNA plans to do with the satellite. Many of us geeks would like to do something like this just to do it, but surely they must be doing something interesting with the satellite now that it is in orbit. What exactly is the fruit of $50,000 + 3 yrs. work + Boeing's grant?

    • Re:Light on info (Score:5, Informative)

      by InitZero ( 14837 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @10:02AM (#2894214) Homepage

      Neither this article, nor the previous one posted on /. mention what the USNA plans to do with the satellite.

      Ham radio [arrl.org] operators all over the world [findu.com] (please view with Netscape; it doesn't load right with IE) use a nifty packet application, APRS [johnston.net] through PCSat.

      APRS is short for Automatic Position Reporting System. Basically, the satellite allows hams to send GPS reports (such as mine [findu.com]), short text messages, weather reports, etc. to a large number of users. The satellite acts as a 'digital repeater'. Any packet it hears, it send back to earth.

      To hit the satellite, all you need is a hand held radio running less than five watts of power into the stock 'rubber duck' antenna. If you're a boater, hiker or whatnot that isn't in range of land communications, you can easily send your data through the satellite and have it relayed to a huge earthly footprint.

      Over much of the populated world, there are land based digital repeaters that will relay these packets for hams. Many even gate the information to the internet [findu.com] where it can be viewed by anyone.

      If you're the least bit technically and electronically minded, you can probably get the base level ham license (Technician) without any difficulty. It doesn't require a knowledge of Morse Code (CW) anymore. You can take the sample Tech test online [hamtest.com]. The sample test uses real questions right off the FCC exam. The test costs under $10 in most areas.

      Using more than a dozen ham radio satellites for free isn't the only reason to get your ham license, of course. There's also that you can modify those 2.4 gHz network cards to run up to 1,500 watts of power legally instead of under half a watt as sold. Think what kind of distance you could extend your network! (And how many birds flying nearby will be microwaved!)

      If nothing else, a ham radio license will get you another punch in your 'biggest geek' card. Who doesn't want that?

      Matt (k4mls)

  • Why launch in Alaska? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @09:25AM (#2894014) Homepage
    Launching a satellite from Alaska? Why? There's free delta-V available from the Earth's rotation if you launch from further south. You don't need to be on the equator.


    Is it on some really wierd polar orbit where you don't want eastward velocity? They'd better really map out the space junk then, because most of it will be coming at them fast.

    • They were most likely borrowing space on someone else's booster.

      If a commercial communications sat was launching into a polar low earth orbit from a pad in Alaska, and had room, a free ride is the right price for this project. :-).
  • Is that it shows that just about anyone with a couple hundred grand can put some junk in orbit. Where will it end? If I can't watch TV because a "real" satellite gets knocked out of orbit by a collision with some university's space-junk, I'll be mighty peeved. Will the $50,000 cover the lawsuit when the thing de-orbits and crashes through my house?
    • yes, good point. you being able to watch television is defiently more important then students getting good science education.

    • No risk to GEOsats (Score:3, Informative)

      by isdnip ( 49656 )
      There's no risk at all to broadcast sats. The TV stations use geostationary (GEO) satellites, in orbit 23k miles above the equator. They all orbit the earth synchronously, so there are no collisions in that belt.

      This and the other amateur (OSCAR) sats are in low earth orbit (LEO), 200-300 miles up. They fly around for a few years and eventually fall back and burn up. They don't come within >22,000 miles of your precious TV broadcast relay.
      • Well, theoretically, a couple pieces of LEO junk could hit each other in just the right way so as to speed one out to 23k miles, where it might hit something. But I think the odds against that are rather staggering.

  • In a related story.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by technopinion ( 469686 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @09:50AM (#2894164)
    A team of 4 students from Devry Technical Institute cobbled together a nuclear submarine using parts scavenged from the set of Junkyard Wars, and a $300 grant from Kmart. Said the leader of the project, "We expected this thing to immediately sink to the bottom and begin its cycle of ocean-killing, but amazingly enough, it went down at a 30-degree angle, taking almost 3 times longer to sink, and it looks like it might pollute the ocean for many more years than we expected. It's quite incredible!"

    This truly is a great day for amateur scientists.

    • Re:In a related story.... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sadly enough, that's probably what you'd get from DeVry students building any sub (much less a nuclear one). There are a few smart people at my campus, but the vast majority can't find the power button on the computer or think that you "change your screensaver" to modify the desktop background.

      And then there's the students in my history class that have no clue what the Cold War was. Sheesh.

      (Anon, because I've seen DeVry crack down on criticism before..)

  • taco bell (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, they could make back their cash if it hits that taco bell target!
  • Wow! I've seen ten-year-old Ferraris [slashdot.org] you couldn't buy with that money. There's no chance you'd get up to Alaska and have them say "reserve not yet met [ebay.com]" is there?

    O.K. out of date joke given the current selling price but I couldn't resist. 8^)

  • Sheesh...another repeat of OLD news (Score:3, Informative)

    by HardCase ( 14757 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @10:08AM (#2894244)
    Zowie, we read about this last November! [slashdot.org]


    Oh, and how about in August? [slashdot.org]

  • Lots of similar projects (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr. Eradicator ( 470089 ) on Thursday January 24, 2002 @10:15AM (#2894294) Homepage
    I spent some time working on a similar project [washington.edu] at the University of Washington [washington.edu] in the Aero-Astro department [washington.edu]. It was part of a group of nanosats [usu.edu] funded by the AFOSR and DARPA.

    These small satellite projects are good for design classes because they are small enough that one year's class can complete the design and the simplicity of the satellites makes for cheap overall costs. Thus, the university can usually afford to fund the construction of the satellite. Actually seeing your hard work being launched on a mission is quite fullfilling.

  • Kudos to them! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Merconium ( 551470 )
    I think this is a great story, for two reasons: 1) many of my 8th graders are actually doing an egg drop next week, so it's funny to see that others think it is as lame as I do (although they have to drop two eggs that touch, so that is much more of a challenge), and 2) some of my students are trying to get money from Intel to build a small solar car, so I understand how difficult it is to actually go through with something like this.

    The reality remains, however, that I don't see Ball Aerospace suddenly dumping their expensive test facilities.

    One wonderful thing about Ball is that they do work very closely with the University of Colorado and NASA to support student designed sats. They aren't, however, cheap.

  • As stated in the article, the satilite will work for 3 years if they are lucky. What I'd like to known is what happens after the thing stops working.
    Will it end as some more orbiting trash or is there a way to bring the satilite down again?
    • Very rarely to engineers plan to leave a non-operative satellite in precious orbit space. With these small satellites, they are usually in low orbits to begin with and after a few months to a year, the orbit continually decays until a critical point at which the satellite begins its fiery re-entry. This is just the passive way of ending a mission.

      With larger sats, engineers will have some sort of end-of-life system onboard which puts it into a de-orbit trajectory.

      I'm not sure what the threshold is for how large a satellite can be (and of what materials it is made) before it will not completely burn up before "hitting some poor soul". I imagine few satellites are this large, and if they are they probably make special arrangements for their end-of-life.

  • My grandmother could build a better satellite.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by supernova87a ( 532540 ) <kepler1.hotmail@com> on Thursday January 24, 2002 @11:40AM (#2894886)
    This is great, just what we need -- more space junk floating up there. It would be nice if people thought as hard about how to get junk out of space as they do about putting junk into space. It's really getting pretty crowded up there. We have a whole Air Force division dedicated to tracking space junk:
    • http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/associate_units/14a f/ links/mission.htm


    What's next, Cletus and friends sending the dishwasher from the front yard into space?
  • are more cheap satellites (built by the amateur radio community since the 1960's) that are almost certainly part of the inspiration of this project. They spawned the whole field of microsatellites.
  • My Satellite only cost about $1500 and that's with an 8x DVD/CDRW/CDR! People will buy anything nowadays...
  • My egg drop at design school was more of an egg fly. A small gust of wind at the drop made the egg lift quite a bit and instead of floating down 10 floors went up 2 then softly down to the ground.

    INTACT

    Yessssss!!!!

  • Build your own satellite... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stanford has plans to launch multiple 4-inch cube micro satellites ("CubeSat's") for about $ 25,000 per satellite to cover the launch costs.
    (Stanford University CubeSat program) [stanford.edu]

    A bunch of Universities and several amateur groups are currently building cube satellites as part of this project. At least one company has investigated selling cubesat kits. Here is an amateur group that is interested in producing cubesat kits that would sell for well under 5K per satellite (StenSat Group) [stensat.org]

    Micro satellites can be built with COTS discrete electronics. Microcontrollers such as the PIC processor have been radiation tested and should work fine in LEO orbits. High efficiency solar cells are the probably the most expensive items and if necessary they can probably be scrounged from various sources (surplus, rejects,etc...)

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