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Space Science

Student-Made Satellite Goes Into Orbit 77

Posted by Zonk from the all-i-did-in-college-was-play-video-games dept.
College Student writes "A Satellite built by aerospace students from 23 university groups successfully took off from Plesetsk, in northern Russia. From the article: 'A Russian booster rocket successfully carried a satellite designed by students into a low Earth orbit yesterday for the European Space Agency under a programme intended to help to inspire and train future aerospace workers.'"
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Student-Made Satellite Goes Into Orbit More

Student-Made Satellite Goes Into Orbit

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  • Unfortunetly.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dduardo ( 592868 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @12:57PM (#13905241)
    Some students made up some results and now the satellite is in the Pacific Ocean.
    • Fortunately, some students modded it for underwater research.

    • It's no joke (Score:2, Informative)

      by Cerdic ( 904049 )
      In the bit of undergraduate research that I've done, I've seen people forge data regularly out of laziness. Sometimes numbers were off from what was expected, but instead of redoing a run of the experiment, they just put in what they thought it should have been. The numbers are reasonable, but still, it's lying.

      Anyone else have experience on this? I'm going to assume that graduate research is better with people who are more serious and care about what they do.

    • Re:Unfortunetly.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by IO ERROR ( 128968 ) * <errorNO@SPAMioerror.us> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @02:03PM (#13905563) Homepage Journal

      The satellite may well be in the Pacific Ocean. The ARRL [arrl.org] is reporting the satellite went silent.

      The Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative (SSETI) Express satellite, sent into orbit from Russia October 27, has gone silent. "We have not heard anything from Express on UHF since last night when the telemetry seemed to indicate a very negative power budget," Graham Shirville, G3VZV, said on the AMSAT BB as he was departing Russia following the launch. "If it does not recover then it will be a sad end to a wonderful mission." Shirville said ground controllers were going to attempt a blind command of the satellite this weekend in an effort to revive the satellite, which carries an Amateur Radio package and three CubeSat picosatellites. The spacecraft had been transmitting AX.25 telemetry at 9k6 bps on 437.250 MHz. Shortly after this week's launch, Shirville had reported the satellite was in nominal mode, producing 9k6 data bursts every 18 seconds. Plans call for the satellite will be turned into a single-channel amateur FM voice Mode U/S transponder after the transmitter serves initial telemetry duty.

  • I was a bit worried... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Dh2000 ( 71834 )
    The first announcement (few hours ago) was that the satellite failed to get a signal, and I had given it up for dead.

    Good thing it was easily fixed.

    Now... for the results, please.

  • Cal Poly was part of the launch (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nf1nk ( 443791 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (kn1fn)> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:03PM (#13905270) Homepage
    http://littonlab.atl.calpoly.edu/ [calpoly.edu]
    The article was notibly short on details, so here is a link to one of the satellites in the launch. This was an impressive feat for the schools involved and much was learned from the process.

  • S-S-SETI? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jettoki ( 894493 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:09PM (#13905294)
    Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative (SSETI) Express spacecraft...

    In other news, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute has filed for damages under intergalactic copyright law, fearing that hostile alien intelligences may mistake the antics of college students for examples of actual human behavior; an error which would inevitably lead to the mercy-killing of our species.

  • Science lead... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:09PM (#13905296)
    As a kid I'd read a book about some high school students building model rockets. The final scene was one where they'd put a mouse (named "Maika" IIRC, in homage to Laika) into a rocket and brought it safely back to earth. There were books like "Encyclopedia Brown" and "Danny Dunn" -- many used science or education to solve problems.

    On a recent trek through a local Monstrous Book Store, I saw a different group of childrens' books... They talked about tolerance, religion, Barbie, single motherhood, Care Bears, Barney, Bratz... but scant few with scientists as the hero.

    In fact, I turn on the TV or rent a DVD, and scientists (and knowledge for that matter) has become the scapegoat for all the world's ills. Toxic spills create monsters. Scientists create doomsday machines. Researchers unleash deadly viruses. And some nice guy who doesn't have all that there book learnin' comes and rescues everyone.

    Now I'm not saying that movies should not be entertaining -- I enjoyed The Matrix not for its pseudo-mysticism but because of the cool fight scenes -- but please please please have a good guy scientist who gets the girl (or a good gal scientist who gets the guy) at least once a decade.

  • Ok, this is a shameless plug, but still a useful one :-) For those interested in Remote Sensing, as this story is about, there is a new slashsite, called http://slashgisrs.org/ [slashgisrs.org] that targets the RS and GIS crowd. The site is about one month old. Cheers :-)
  • It fell silent after failing to separate from its booster properly http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/051028_sseti_ russiansat.html [space.com]

    • Re:Something's gone horribly wrong (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's not right! You should read the linked story properly before posting - they are talking about one other s/c.

      I was at the launch site and could hear SSETI Express on a radio during its first pass with my own ears. In addition, I'm in close contact with the mission operations center and can confirm that the satellite was not only transmitting but even that the whole launch, separation, safety-countdown, cubesat deplyoment, beacon transmission and the tracking and commanding of the S/C went smoothly and
    • Wrong. That's the russian one that was also on the rocket.
  • Brad: "My gum is where???"
           

  • Not to rain on their parade, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Razor Sex ( 561796 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:18PM (#13905342)
    this isn't a first by any means. Here at the University of Arizona, this is pretty common. I have a friend helping to build one of the next Mars orbiters, and students were also involved in builidng Spirit and Opportunity.

    • Re:Not to rain on their parade, but... (Score:4, Informative)

      by CheshireCatCO ( 185193 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:23PM (#13905361) Homepage
      Yes, but they didn't design and build the thing themselves, they're effectively just technicians on the project. (Before you take offense, let me note that CU-Boulder builds a lot of instruments, too, and I had friends who worked on some of them. They're getting really good experience, but they're not responsible for the entire project.)

      There are other cases of student-designed/built/operated spacecraft, though: SNOE (Student Nitrous-Oxide Explorer) comes to mind. But NASA is *not* going to risk a Mars mission on students, though. It's too expensive.

    • Re:Not to rain on their parade, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phliar ( 87116 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:36PM (#13905426) Homepage
      this isn't a first by any means. ... I have a friend helping to build one of the next Mars orbiters, and students were also involved in builidng Spirit and Opportunity.
      This is "a satellite designed by students". Seems to me there's a teeny difference between "helping to build" (or "involved in") and "designed by".

  • Yakov (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Legendof_Pedro ( 900265 )
    In Soviet Russia, rockets launch you!
  • I see a collaboration between several European nations and the European Space Agency to get student involvement in space technology.

    What kind of opportunities do we have here in the US to do something similar? Is NASA putting together a student cooperative to put a satellite in space? Bill O'Reilly and friends said that we're the #1 superduperpower, but we aren't doing stuff like this. Why?

    • Re:Hey NASA, why not do this? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      NASA does do things like this. I'm a sophmore electrical engineering student at Utah State University and I'm helping with USU entry in the 4th University Nanosatellite Competition http://ususat.usu.edu/ [usu.edu]. Selected universities design, build, and test small satellites and the most useful and best designed gets launched at the end.

  • Sat/strat imagery? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danharan ( 714822 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:39PM (#13905434) Journal
    TFA mentions that one of the picosatellites will beam back pictures.

    Anyone know what kind of resolution this thing has?

    This has me wondering how expensive it would be to put one of these cams on a high-altitude balloon to get free-of-copyright basemap data. Not that I have the technical chops to do such a thing, but if this is possible is anyone going to do this soon, and will prices finally start falling?

  • Picosatellites (Score:3, Informative)

    by halftrack ( 454203 ) <{jonkje} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday October 29, 2005 @01:39PM (#13905435) Homepage
    One of those 'picosatellites' is the NCUBE-2 (cue bad la^Hgamer puns.) Sadly, at the moment it seems like it's a dead duck. HAMs can help listen for it, information on the NCUBE homepage [ncube.no]. The other satellites are reported to be communicating with ground stations.
  • When my ashes are launched, I will become a circle of femtosatellites [wikipedia.org].

  • Student Build Satellites are Nothing New (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sstickeler ( 786277 ) on Saturday October 29, 2005 @02:13PM (#13905610)
    Students have been building and launching satellites for some time. I worked on a purely student built satellite back in college in 1995 which was commissioned by Nasa: http://lasp.colorado.edu/snoe/overview.html [colorado.edu]
  • So at least before the batteries died, the student satellite did better than the Russian satellite which didn't even separate from the rocket. From oil companies going bankrupt to rockets that don't work, Russians are having a harder time than they normally do.
  • I've set free hundereds of baloons beyond the clouds before I was 12 months old
  • wow *surprised*

    (not a sarcastic post)
  • American university have been doing this for over a decade, yet this is the third slashdot thread touting this ESA project. Yawn.

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