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Space Science

NASA Goes Bargain Basement With New Satellite 150

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the because-we-need-more-orbiting-space-junk dept.
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."
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NASA Goes Bargain Basement With New Satellite More

NASA Goes Bargain Basement With New Satellite

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  • not all rosy... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MrAndrews ( 456547 ) * <mcm@1889.BOYSENca minus berry> on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:30PM (#21438833) Homepage
    The Russians aren't too happy about this new side to NASA... they're trying to distance themselves from the whole idea [pttbt.ca]...

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by king-manic ( 409855 )

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

      Perhaps in the past they were very geek friendly and carried many niche goods but these days Radio Shack/Circuit City seems to be the Compaq of electronics. Thats is premium quality priced for below average quality goods. Want to pay 25% more for stuff you can find at semi-expensive best buy? go to Radio Shack/Circuit city? Want to speak to someone without a clue about what they sell? Go to Radio Shack/Circuit City. Want a novel piece of junk that doesn't do anything? Go to radio shack/ circuit city.

      It's s

    • ...the Russians wouldn't be happy that NASA was stealing their idea [wikipedia.org].

      But then, I guess immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

  • Is it just me (Score:4, Funny)

    by COMON$ ( 806135 ) * on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:34PM (#21438885) Journal
    Or did anyone else have the vision of a giant slingshot for the launch?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Selfbain ( 624722 )
      I had assumed they were just going to pray and hope God launched it for them.
      • I see you are a proponent of Intelligent Rocket Design (TM).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by geekoid ( 135745 )
          I am a VERY strong proponent of Intelligent Rocket Design (TM). It's much better then Un-Intelligent Rocket Design (TM)...

          I am not in favor of prayer based rocket launches.

    • I suppose the implication of the smaller/lighter 'widgets' is that you can send a lot more of them per launch. Hence, the price per widget would indeed be less.
      • thats the impression I got.
        As an aside, however, I seem to remember this sort of thing from the past; I fuzzily but relatively certainly recall it being advertised that you could send up a .5kg, I think 5cm cube for $10,000. I could swear that this was something that wasn't a prediction, but a fixed deal. Anybody else remember this?
        I'm a alleged past expert in this sort of thing, so I worked out a solar powered oystershell (so to speak) Mp3 player that would play Black Sabbath "Sabotage" in its entirety ove

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

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

        • Yeah, but what about a cannon and a slingshot working together? A multi-stage approach: the slingshot fires the cannon into the sky, and when the cannon reaches maximum height it fires and sends the payload hurtling into space. I hear that NASA may be signing an exclusive partnership with ACME to develop this...
          • More seriously, a multistage approach appears to be seriously viable when using balloon-rocket hybrids. It's not so much that it helps you get to orbit distancewise or speedwise, but that it removes the necessity of putting so much energy into fighting drag and pushing aside air.
    • All you have to do is master the double bomb jump! :)

  • Miniaturization (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eviloverlordx ( 99809 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:39PM (#21438943)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      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.
    • 'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.

      If you loose your dog you may lose him. Lose is a verb, "loose" can be either an adjective (as you used it) or a verb. When Linux says "you may loose data" it is warning you that you will lose your data on purpose (although I'm sure it's really just a typo and whoever wrote that warning never thought of it like that).

      Perhaps you should change it to "'Looser' is when you let your belt out a notch. 'Loser' is what you are wh
    • Star Trek? All-in-one probes? I'm at school right now, but if I were home, I'd pull out either the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual, or the latest edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia and show you all the different classes of probes they use for different usage conditions and types of data to be gathered. Granted, the 15 some-odd predefined types would be a step up from one custom satellite for every imaginable configuration, but there is still hardware specialization, even in Star Trek.
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tuoqui ( 1091447 )
      Yeah just make sure these satellites are engineered to last 6 months only.
    • All of your satellite are belong to us

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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
      • You can't make a "standard" bus because as soon as you do, somebody will need more [power,data,real estate,angular momentum,precision,jitter compensation] that the standard bus can provide. And then you're back into the business of custom modifications for each scientific payload.

        Seems to me that, while you can't really come up with a standard bus at this point, you can come up with a draft standard that specifies what can be specified and has some economy of scale and network advantages, and allows enginee
  • $10M may seem cheap but it's still out of the price range for most businesses. Maybe Google or CNN can afford to buy a beowolf cluster of these babies to help it map the Earth, and maybe even Rand McNally can afford one or two, but I doubt Joe's Map Company or the local independent radio station can.

    Let me know when I can buy them for only 3 easy payments of $29.95.

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

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jrob323 ( 931808 )
      FTA: 'We think we can do whole missions for less than $10 million...'

      'less than $10 million' is NASA-Speak for 'at least $350 million'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 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 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by OldeTimeGeek ( 725417 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @04:11PM (#21440111)
      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....

  • Obligatory (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:41PM (#21438991) Journal
    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.
  • i'll take two...

  • Data Costs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by schwep ( 173358 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:42PM (#21438997)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Dripdry ( 1062282 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:43PM (#21439019) Journal
    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 (Score:4, Informative)

    by TopSpin ( 753 ) * on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:43PM (#21439037) Journal
    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 (Score:4, Informative)

      by iamlucky13 ( 795185 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @05:56PM (#21441451)
      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.

      • First of all, I wanted to question whether anybody knew if they had any customers for this satellite bus?

        I suspect that NASA is unlikely to find customers for this bus - it's an immature design, and is more costly and massive than flight-proven offerings from the likes of Surrey Satellites. Even if you restricted yourself to only buying from US companies, I think you'd find that Microsat Systems Inc, AeroAstro, or one of the other US smallsat manufacturers could outdo this FASTSAT concept.

        Second, does anyon

  • The new unit of measurement (Score:3, Funny)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @02:49PM (#21439103) Homepage

    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 (Score:5, Funny)

      by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) * on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:03PM (#21439279) Journal
      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...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 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.
        • Well, it clocks in at 200 pounds based on its velocity. Shouldn't it read "it scales in at 200pounds"?

    • Re: 39.5 Inches = about 1 Meter (Score:5, Informative)

      by denis-The-menace ( 471988 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:13PM (#21439385)
      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
      • 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.

    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by JazzLad ( 935151 )
        Like /.'ers know the size of an exercise ball?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Jose ( 15075 )
          yea, they should have clarified that...something like "39.5 inches in diameter -- not much smaller than a 40" exercise ball"

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 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!

    • 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!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 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
    • 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.
    • 39.5 inches in diameter -- not much larger than an exercise ball That's one meter, for those of you not suffering from ISS (imperial system syndrome).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )
      I was surprised at the 39.5 inches - when did that become a unit of measure. 39.37in I could understand...

    • The real question is, if it were filled with DVDs, how many libraries of congress would it hold?

  • from the article ....

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

    How do they manage this?

    ]{

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 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? (Score:5, Informative)

      by icebrain ( 944107 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:01PM (#21439259)
      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).
  • Nobody can!

    So, I guess that since we're pulling back from exploring space, we've decided to do the equivalent of taking our ball and leaving. Since we apparently can't afford to send more ships up, we'll leave it so polluted with obnoxious small pieces of debris that no other nation will be able to safely navigate our man-made minefield.
  • That should be enough for a headcrab and a garden gnome.

  • Nearly GNU naming (Score:5, Funny)

    by niceone ( 992278 ) * on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:01PM (#21439263) Journal
    FASTSAT Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT)

    There, fixed it.
  • Certainly they could have come up with a better comparison for the Slashdot crowd than an exercise ball. How about an 18lb turkey or a 128oz belly buster bag of Doritos?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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...

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by P3NIS_CLEAVER ( 860022 )
        Because '1 Meter', '90 Kilograms weight' and '50 Kilograms of Payload' is just too damn difficult for the average American.
        • Are Slashdot readers only average American's now? That's why so many people are bringing this up: It's insulting!
    • 5 gallons of Mountain Dew

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sm62704 ( 957197 )
      At least they didn't use the "lightbulbs" unit of measurement.

  • Article Errors (Score:5, Informative)

    by teeks99 ( 849132 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:03PM (#21439281) Homepage

    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. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:13PM (#21439381)
    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!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by LingNoi ( 1066278 )
      You're a brit you should know the deal by now.. English build the tech, Americans take all the glory.

    • Starships...run with engines the size of a walnut!
      Walnuts...run with engines the size of starships!


      - RG>
    • Indeed. Surrey's SNAP-1 weighed in at around 6.5 kg (yes, that decimal point is in the right place), cost around $1.5M, and was built in about 6 months. It included full 3-axis attitude control (via a momentum wheel and magnetic torquers), a butane-based propulsion system, and a nifty structural design based around stackable modular trays.
  • so... how long you guys think it will be before Google has their own privately owned global satellite array that updates google maps in realtime? You'll be watching your girlfriends every move from the comfort of your computer chair 10 years from now. mark my words.
  • i better go on a diet if i want to live in a satellite...

  • Attitude Control (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GraWil ( 571101 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @03:25PM (#21439509)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by 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.
  • It is hexagonally shaped and clocks in at a little less than 200 Lbs.

    When you're talking about weight, the proper phrase is "Weighs in", not "clocks in"...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Zenaku ( 821866 )
      It would make perfect sense if you would just spend a few parsecs thinking about it.
  • When we will be seeing satellites at Walmart next to the dollar DVD bin?
  • Soon we will be looking up in the night sky and seeing "SPlanets" (spam planets, of course) Terrific...

  • I believe I speak for Slashdot when I say... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ZombieRoboNinja ( 905329 ) on Wednesday November 21, 2007 @05:49PM (#21441365)
    ...a WHAT ball?
  • 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.

    Am I the only one who misread this as "and the midget you want to test" ?
  • The article's fine... but they say "including the launch vehicle", but don't mention just *how* it's supposed to be launched. The old "getaway special", you knew - it was via the Shuttle. They don't say here.

          mark

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