CubeSats Spurring Satellite Revolution

kkleiner writes "Thanks to the miniaturization of electronics, small CubeSat satellites have quickly become the standard for orbital Earth monitoring. Their modular design and lower cost makes them accessible to many, from university researchers to backers of crowdfunding campaigns. This year, the number of CubeSats launched will at least double the number in orbit to date."

Re:

[RussR42]

Great, just what we need, even more ... Damnit. First post AC beat me to it! But I had time to skim TFA and didn't see a reference to de-orbiting them.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, just what we need, even more ... Damnit. First post AC beat me to it! But I had time to skim TFA and didn't see a reference to de-orbiting them.

They're in low-earth orbit. It's not an issue [qb50.eu], because they deorbit naturally.

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[Samantha Wright]

Alas, depending on the construction material, LEO can still be hazardous [slashdot.org].

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[Samantha Wright]

...okay, I don't actually know if that was LEO or not. But, de-orbiting. Pretend I said "de-orbiting can still be hazardous."

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[__aaltlg1547]

Not really. These things are tiny and they burn up in reentry.

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[Samantha Wright]

Not if you're really, really, really ridiculously tall.

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[davester666]

Doesn't really matter. It's "doubling" from 2 to 4...

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[mcgrew]

LEO can still be hazardous.

Something that small can't, at least after it reaches the atmosphere. These things are, if I read right, about the size of a Rubic Cube. Skylab was just a little bigger. They'll vaporize instantly.

+1 funny, though, and that was a great link.

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[Samantha Wright]

I know. :) But I had to work it in somewhere!

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[__aaltlg1547]

A 1U cubesat is 10cm x 10cm x 10cm. There are also 2U and 3U cubesats (two and three times that unit size). They have to be that small to fit in the launchers. Many of them are designed to unfold when they come out of the launchers, so they can be bigger once they're up there.

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[msauve]

That's only a single, specific, example. The CubeSat design specification allows an orbital decay lifetime, after the end of mission, of up to 25 years.

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[sl4shd0rk]

because they deorbit naturally.

Otherwise known as the "Duck and Cover" de-orbiting method.

Re:Great

[khallow]

You do realize that the Earth gets hit every day by stuff that would destroy your car's paint job (and perhaps the garage it was in) - if there wasn't something [wikipedia.org] in the way.

To reach Earth's surface, a vehicle would have to dissipate several tens of millions of joules of energy per kilogram of the vehicle. And it will, by heating up the atmosphere and vaporizing the vehicle. If the cubesat isn't designed for reentry, then most of the vehicle will probably be vaporized long before it reaches the Earth's surface. Even if somehow, it were made of unobtainium, that could withstand the heat of reentry intact, it'd still slow down to terminal velocity in the lower atmosphere. That might mess up someone's car, but it's not nuclear bomb-scale "duck and cover".

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[bandy]

There's a perfect sound track for this: "Space Junk", by DEVO [youtube.com]

Re:Great

[Spy Handler]

If they charged a "redemption fee" for each cubesat - similar to what many states do with aluminium cans - you could have homeless people clean up the mess.

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[Rhacman]

Perhaps, but on the other hand it's problematic for the space telescopes when someone tries to clean the optics with a spray bottle and a fistful of newspaper.

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[__aaltlg1547]

They're required to have a deorbiting plan.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

They're not in the Nile, they're in low Earth orbit. Being in the Nile is a bad idea anyway - what if you catch schistosomiasis? That's no laughing matter.

Next year's news...

[msauve]

The popularity of cubesats has caused a great increase in "space junk," which increases the threat to satellites which support critical infrastructure.

Re:Next year's news...

[ModernGeek]

I believe that the orbit of these is so low that it degrades relatively quickly, and is out of the way of any real satellites.

Re:Next year's news...

[msauve]

If 10-15 years is "relatively quickly," yes. The majority of satellites are in LEO [wikipedia.org], and it's where there is the most concern about space junk.

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[mcgrew]

According to a link another slashdotter provided, these come down after three months.

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[msauve]

According the the actual CubeSat specs, the design requirement allows them to stay in orbit up to 25 years after end-of-mission. The OP was pointing to a single, specific example, which doesn't apply in general.

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[khallow]

If 10-15 years is "relatively quickly," yes.

That is relatively quickly. It's certainly quick enough to keep them from being a major contributor.

The majority of satellites are in LEO, and it's where there is the most concern about space junk.

LEO is not just a single orbit. Objects can last from days to millennia depending how high up they are and how fluffy they are (cross section versus mass). The most concern about space junk is in the higher orbits where a collision can scatter debris in orbits that last longer than a human lifetime.

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[SB9876]

There are currently almost 20,000 pieces of space debris at least 5 cm in diameter that we are tracking. The addition of a few hundred CubeSats which generally have a short lifetime in orbit is not a significant increase in the orbital space debris load.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[mcgrew]

Since, as others have pointed out, there is no possible way for this to be space junk the comment is not only way overrated but offtopic as well.

I know reading the article is seldom done, but if you're moderating you really should RTFA so you don't mod comments like the above badly.

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[msauve]

Really? If you're going to make claims, you should substantiate them. A very brief amount of research (as simple as clicking on one of the links [thespacereview.com] in the article) would show that there is a real concern, such as this statment:

good engineering projects for students, but of little use otherwise--and possible, in large numbers, an orbital debris nuisance.

or you might even find, with a simple Google search, that CubeSat collisions have already occurred [spacesafetymagazine.com].

Or, you can simply go on blindly putting your foot in your m

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[mcgrew]

From your link: "At 05:38 GMT on Thursday 23rd May, Ecuadorâ(TM)s first and only satellite collided with the fuel tank of an S14 Soviet rocket, which was launched in 1985."

Yes, there was a collision between Ecuador's satellite (TFA doesn't say how big) but the satellite wasn't the debris, it was the discarded fuel tank that when jettisoned should have been thrown so that it would have come back down that was the debris. But the space junk problem hadn't really come up a quarter century ago. The rest of

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[stenvar]

Oh, my, the sky is falling!

CubeSat / Skybox Imaging satellites

[auric_dude]

Looks like this format of satellite is finding a good few uses http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/startup-skybox/ [wired.com] aswell as smallish satellites from Guildford University UK http://www.surrey.ac.uk/ssc/activity/phd_projects/small_satellite_sar.htm [surrey.ac.uk].

Can't fool me

[PPH]

It's the Borg. For midgets.

Terrible Trend--Space Junk

[Anonymous Coward]

I really think we should, instead, be building a small number of super-satellites to stop the proliferation of space junk around the Earth. There could be other advantageous as well, such as shared energy and infrastructural components.

The risks of too many eggs in too few baskets would entail higher risks. I think making these manned space stations would, therefore make sense.

Matthew

CubeSats or ClueBats?

[gnoshi]

I somehow managed to read that as 'ClueBats Spurring Satellite Revolution', which depending on the revolution could have been better news than the real article.

Obligatory AMSAT plug

[Dishwasha]

It's hard to believe an article like this gets posted without somebody mentioning AMSAT [amsat.org]. They've been building satellites since the 60's on a much larger scale. Help support the latest AMSAT model called the FOX-1 [amsat.org].

Proud to be part of the revolution

[wakeboarder]

I can lay claim to two of those sat's

Dallas TX Workshop on CubeSat

[MauiJerry]

If you are in (or willing to be in) south central USA next month, Citizens in Space is holding a 2 day "Space Hacker Workshop" July 20-21 http://www.citizensinspace.org/2013/06/citizen-science-and-space-exploration-in-the-lone-star-state/ [citizensinspace.org] The Space Hacker Workshop will provide hands-on exposure to a variety of microcontrollers, sensors, imaging systems, and other components. With these components, participants will learn how to design and build microgravity, fluid-physics, life-science, and engineering experiments. Each paid participant will receive a hardware package to take home after the workshop. The focus here is on SubOrbital flights - they are less expensive and CiS has booked 10 flights on the XCOR Lynx suborbital craft to carry 10 small sats and a citizen scientist payload specialist.

SDR TV Tuner Dongle and Raspberry Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting project for receiving satellite signals with inexpensive RTL SDR USB tuners and a Pi.

http://blog.carpcomm.com/

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[DarkAce911]

Personally, I am waiting for the Pirate Bay Sat with a tracker that cannot be shutdown. That would work with something like this. Back to the future with Fidonet 2.0

But will they survive long enough to give results?

[KreAture]

And, if so will the results be reliable?
Space is not a fun place to be if you are a highly sensitive semiconductor.
Lots of high energy particles whiss about all the time and can, and will, influence those semiconductors. Without special shielding or design you will get undesireable effects.

Better than Tor...

[LoRdTAW]

I know of a guy who made big money in bit coin hardware who is interested in developing a network of cube sats which create an encrypted, unregulated mesh network. The idea being that not only can people have a free as in beer network connection virtually anywhere in the world, but it will also be free from government/corporate spying and regulation. No one would own it and the funding would be crowd sourced.

It is not part of the internet but a separate network altogether. People will be responsible for cre

Rail gun?

[Captain_Chaos]

I wonder how long it will be before these are launched without rockets by firing them into orbit directly from Earth in some way. Something like a rail gun with the satellite in a bullet shaped sabot-like shell with just a small retro rocket for orbital insertion.