NASA Forming $3M Satellite Communication, Propulsion Competition

coondoggie (973519) writes NASA took the next step in forming a large-scale, $3 million competition to build advanced propulsion and communications technologies for small, inexpensive satellite systems known as cubesats. The Cubesat Lunar Challenge will be broken up into two areas: propulsion and communication while in orbit around the moon. In Request For Information published this week, NASA said the two challenges would provide competitive opportunities for a variety of competition teams to deploy cubesats on a NASA or third-party provided launch.

Fuck beta

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again, after more than a week of peace...
So all was OK throughout the day, and than I made the mistake to check again /.
Did I fucking ask to show me that fucking beta?
Why, why?

The Moon and Deep Space

[Mister Liberty]

Article states: "amateur radio wavelengths not suitable for advanced science missions in the remote distances of deep space,",
and: " these challenges are expected to contribute to opening deep space exploration to non-government spacecraft for the first
time, NASA stated."

Is the universe crunching already?; since when is the moon 'deep space'?

Re:

[caffeinated_bunsen]

Since it's two or three orders of magnitude further away than traditional cubesat territory, i.e. low Earth orbit, and they're planning to use it as a proving ground for interplanetary cubesat technology.

Re:

[jandrese]

Maybe. People have been toying with laser comms for a long time now with mixed success. They can be made to work and have great bandwidth but tend to be fiddly and have lots of trouble with environmental effects. For satellite to satellite comms they work great until there's a big planet in the way (which blocks RF too, so no big difference there), but for satellite to ground they're a lot harder to keep working.

Maybe UMich can help?

[jandrese]

While they didn't hit their Kickstarter Goal [kickstarter.com], this is exactly the sort of thing they were trying to make last year.

steer into junk

[bugs2squash]

surely it's just a matter of arranging to get it hit by debris heading in the right direction and small/slow enough not to destroy the cubesat. Bonus points if cubesat captures the debris and takes it out of orbit at end of life.