Space Station's 'Cubesat Cannon' Has Gone Rogue 143
astroengine writes: Last night (Thursday), two more of Planet Lab's shoebox-sized Earth imaging satellites launched themselves from aboard the International Space Station, the latest in a series of technical mysteries involving a commercially owned CubeSat deployer located outside Japan's Kibo laboratory module. Station commander Steve Swanson was storing some blood samples in one of the station's freezers Friday morning when he noticed that the doors on NanoRack's cubesat deployer were open, said NASA mission commentator Pat Ryan. Flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston determined that two CubeSats had been inadvertently released. "No crew members or ground controllers saw the deployment. They reviewed all the camera footage and there was no views of it there either," Ryan said.
They'd had enough. (Score:2, Funny)
They couldn't stand it another second.
SkyNet Deployment (Score:5, Funny)
Micro-nukes. Everything is executing according to plan. Do not worry, Citizen!
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Sir! We have a problem!
There is a dedicated team of hackers attempting to plant a virus in our main system.
We think it's a team led by Jeff Goldblum and the Android from Star Trek; Arnold help us if Mr Crusher is involved as well!
Cancel concern; they had a nuke with them with an easy pal code. We lost 10000 units, NBD.
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Funny thing I heard a few months ago. A type of mini nuke the US once deployed in Germany called an M29, W54 'Davy Crockett' had two safety features to stop it accidentally detonating.. One was a ranging timing / acceleration device that prevented the nuke from going off before it had been fired and then detonated once it had reached the correct position.. The other was an arming on off switch. Don't worry they were apparently also protected by being kept in boxes locked with padlocks..
Re:Decepticons (Score:2)
The mini-decepticon bots are now safely on their way back to Megatron.
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Russia inadvertently set it into action when they moved troops into Ukraine
Congratulations!
Your brainwashing was a success! :-)
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Read as Claptrap
The Clapper?
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I'm pretty sure the headline "ISIS attacks ISS" would confuse so many people that the world would never recover.
Don't point that thing at me! (Score:2)
Best you point that thing away from the station until we can figure out what's going on.
Wonder if NASA has been hacked....Again....
Re:Don't point that thing at me! (Score:5, Funny)
Best you point that thing away from the station until we can figure out what's going on.
Those damned satellite thieves are getting bolder every day.
Note to future astronauts: be sure to roll the windows up and take your keys when you leave the module.
Re:Don't point that thing at me! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh god how I love the mid western simple life style. My wife says, "it's not funny, they really believe it."
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To be fair, the times I've been robbed in person were in fact for drug money. If I were to be robbed while delivering pizza to a space station, I'd bet on "for drug money" too!
But do remember that people living the "mid western simple life style" are perfectly capable of jokes at the expense of your expectations, too.
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Re:Don't point that thing at me! (Score:4, Interesting)
Cannot speak for the op but the one time i was robbed (at gun point) , the police caught them (two people) and they admited to spending the money on drugs. I didn't interogate them at all, i was showed a recording by a victims advocacy representative and watch them admit to it during the questioning.
The interesting thing was the advocate asked my what i thought about them getting sentenced to rehab. I asked if that would be after they served the three years mandatory for the gun spec or before? The could have killed me, or if it was two hours earlier, i eould have been packing myself and i could have killed them or all of us could be dead. Thankfully, no one else was around so the possability of inovcent bystanders getting shot would have been low but still there. I can't belive they wanted to give them a slap on the wrist.
Re:Don't point that thing at me! (Score:4, Insightful)
To me, though, the really stupid thing is leaving decisions about the judicial process in the hands of the victims.
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When you're robbed by a group, and they're openly discussing where to buy the drugs with the money their taking from you, there's little mystery.
Seriously, do you think people just make this up? How many times have you actually been robbed and/or assaulted yourself? Try delivering pizza in areas including low income neighborhoods for a few years if you want a first-hand education (well, don't, if you're female, seriously).
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Those damned satellite thieves are getting bolder every day.
I'll say. They pretend to wipe the windshield clean with their squeegees, next thing you'll notice, the bucket was filthy to begin with.
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Most likely a software bug. The amount of stupid bugs that exist in software due to pressed time constraints and attempt to save money is sometimes baffling.
Re:Don't point that thing at me! (Score:5, Funny)
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As hard as you're trying to be funny, these aren't rockets and it really isn't rocket science.
Orbital mechanics ... maybe, rocket science, not even a little. The rocket science ended long ago before the 'cannon' was even installed on the station.
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Orbital mechanics ... maybe, rocket science, not even a little.
Orbital mechanics is "advanced" rocket science (i.e. the science after you get liftoff without blowing yourself to smithereens)
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I'm with the sheriff on this one: if an alien is robbing my space station, it's an illegal alien in my book!
Re: Don't point that thing at me! (Score:1)
In that case, Tony Abbott will send the alien to Nauru and pretend there never was a spacecraft.
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The really funny thing is that we, and especially NASA know how to write good software [fastcompany.com]. It is just rarely done because ... no, it's not really that more expensive or slower, at least not as much as you'd think. It's just a lot less sexy.
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Best you point that thing away from the station until we can figure out what's going on.
Wonder if NASA has been hacked....Again....
I wonder if the hackers understand the irony of fucking with objects in permanent orbit.
And by that I mean if they understand that turning our satellite network into their own personal pinball machine will likely knock themselves offline in a rather permanent way.
Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot, and then doing it again in the other foot just for good measure.
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Nothing like shooting yourself in the foot, and then doing it again in the other foot just for good measure.
Just as long as your foot is firmly planted on the right person's neck at the time.
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If only most of the internet wasn't delivered by terrestrial fiber... Satellites, they are useful for many things, but not for internet for the most of us, not really.
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Best you point that thing away from the station until we can figure out what's going on.
Wonder if NASA has been hacked....Again....
I wonder if the hackers understand the irony of fucking with objects in permanent orbit.
If it is hackers, it's likely some High School aged script kiddie trying to hack into some website to play games. So far they've only found tick tack toe, but what's this GTNW folder? Wait, that's a good movie idea! Joshua, call casting and get me Matthew Broderic's and Ali Sheedy's agents...
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The sad thing is, if it did happen, and it was not state sanctioned, they would end up dead. Even the Chinese have learned this ( blowing things up in higher orbits, then finding out a few years later they could not launch like they wanted to ) and are most likely careful never to do it in such a high orbit again.
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I wonder if the hackers understand the irony of fucking with objects in permanent orbit.
I don't think that really matters, because said objects are not in permanent orbit.
The ISS is in LEO, and is still interfacing with the atmosphere. It must be routinely nudged prograde to prevent it from deorbiting. Even if this cubesat "cannon" had the delta-V to push one of these into a high enough orbit to get away from this truth, the cubesat has no means to perform a complimentary maneuver at the top of the orbit and it's peri will remain interfaced with the atmosphere and it will fall back to earth.
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Mod parent up !
You are *not* to detonate in the bomb bay. I repeat, you are NOT to detonate in the bomb bay!
Skynet (Score:1)
...and it began to learn at a geometric rate. On Sept 4th it gained self-awareness.
Fellow Humans. (Score:2)
There is no reason for panic.
Return to your standard subroutines.
Blood samples. (Score:3, Funny)
So... is this our first evidence of the space vampires that faked the moon landing?
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Hey now, everyone knows the moon landing was faked in a sound stage on Mars. The whole space vampires thing was just an urban legend!
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Please, please, please let them all look like Mathilda May
Control / Guidance System (Score:1)
Thrust Vectoring is probably required to steer the upper stage at a height of 150 km or so, when the missile turns parallel to earth. A powerful electromagnet will open a small vent in order to change direction as required. When the desired attitude has been reached, fire a counter-impulse.
We don't need more than an Atmel MCU to do this. Braun had less computing power than is in any Atmel CPU. Of course the challenge is in software correctness and proper dimensioning of thrust impulses, control algos and th
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Attitude relative to earth might also be an issue to solve. Three ground laser pointers which track the missile could be the solution.
Or is it easier to set up some sort of "local differential GPS" (plus two receivers onboard missile) ?
Re: Here's A Challenge (Score:2)
Forgive my Godwin, but don't you mean center of "die welt"?
Obvious answer (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA ... NSA ... it's just one letter off, and it explains mysteriously launched spy satellites. /paranoia
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Why bother with doing it this way. Just do it using the Reusable Boeing X-37b Vehicle the Air Force has in orbit since December 2012 so you can alter the orbits enough to be useful. Everybody knows when the ISS is overhead.
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NASA, just one A-hole away from the N SA
Yes HAL? (Score:1)
It can only be attributable to human error.
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Launched *Themselves*??? (Score:3)
They obviously have a plan....
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They could have formed a committee, in which case a plan is much less likely.
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They thought they were escape capsules. So they did.
The Cake is a Lie (Score:2)
GlaDOS? Is that you?
Re:The Cake is a Lie (Score:4, Funny)
Space space wanna go to space yes please space. Space space. Go to space.
data everywhere just wants to be free (Score:2)
the alternate punchline might be "close the outer door, Hal..."
Did anyone check 4Chan? (Score:2, Funny)
HAL9000 (Score:2)
Open the pod bay doors HAL.
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"I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that. [continues singing "Daisey" in the background]
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At the risk of being pedantic, Daisy comes up later when Dave is in the process of disconnecting HAL.
The full conversation when Dave is outside the ship goes like this: (from imdb)
Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is t
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Yea, I know, he's on Europa, at least that's where he's been for the last 4 years or so.. Just go with the flow of the joke... ;)
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Dave's not here, man....
Yea, I know, he's on Europa, at least that's where he's been for the last 4 years or so.. Just go with the flow of the joke... ;)
You damn young kids getting WHOOSHED again by us seniors. Now get offa my C&C LP collection... err, I mean lawn.
Fear of spooking the folk... (Score:1)
Kibo. (Score:2)
Everyone knows that Kibo [kibo.com] is thought to stand for "knowledge in, bullshit out."
The joys (and problems) of romaji (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, because its a Japanese module it is a word in their language. I don't know, something like "Hope".
Depending on how it's spelled in Japanese, it could be tons of different words.
Looking just at how it's spelled in romaji (the Roman alphabet), Kibo has no macron over the "o", which, strictly speaking, means a short "o" value. (Instead of syllabic stress as used in English, Japanese uses a concept called a "mora" [wikipedia.org] by linguists, referring to the time length of a sound.)
(Also, because Slashcode is still not unicode-compliant, and is fundamentally US-centric, I'm using the ^ circumflex over vowels instead of the overbar macron, which Slashcode just eats and refuses to display.)
Kibo with a short "o" could mean:
Meanwhile, kibô with a long "o" could mean:
This range of meanings for the Japanese word kibo or kibô is almost silly, it's so broad. I hope this might begin to explain why written Japanese still uses kanji (Chinese characters) -- all of the above meanings that fall under one or two romaji spellings are each spelled differently when written in kanji.
Anyway, for the satellites, I'm pretty sure the intended meaning must clearly be youngest aunt. Or maybe it's a plan to ensnare or entrap someone? :-P
Cheers,
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It's Kibou, with the long o (and there's more than one way to romanize Japanese; the one I usually use doesn't rely on extended ascii and things like the macron).
The Japanese site for the module makes that explicit if you can read hiragana:
http://iss.jaxa.jp/kibo/ [iss.jaxa.jp]
Using hiragana means they don't narrow the meaning down, but yeah, "hope" is what it's supposed to mean if you go through the full text ( http://kibo.jaxa.jp/en/about/ [kibo.jaxa.jp] ):
"The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), known as "Kibo" (pronounced key-bow) wh
Whoosh. (Score:2)
I'm not saying that it was extraterrestrials.. (Score:1)
But...
Scary. (Score:1)
This is actually very worrying from the standpoints of future launches like this from ISS, and interference with existing satellites' orbits. They likely have a low enough orbit, but still scary.
I can imagine that a lot of safety reviews will occur, given the previous misfire of two others from a similar method.
Isn't it obvious? (Score:2)
Isn't it obvious that the same Martians that keep stealing the landers we send over there =)
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No, they are just popping the tires.
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Geckos (Score:1)
It's the Russian space sex geckos!
They are harvesting materials for a space based reptilian swinger club.
Redneck excuse (Score:2)
I was just cleaning it and it went off. I didn't know it was loaded.
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I tried that excse whenn I was aroudn 12. I stlill wnet blnid, thouhg.
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But I bet you're a hell of a good banjo player.
Excellent. (Score:2)
Everything is going according to plan.
Wait...did I say that out loud?
TBBT (Score:1)
Where are the interlocks? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is pretty bad. I designed a controller for some mechanical actuators on a satellite once and the design was filled with carefully designed interlocks and watchdog logic that would prevent an unintentional deployment in the event of multiple failures. It's astonishing that this could get installed on the ISS without a similarly rigorous design.
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Interlocks and safety measures all depends on the risk. Risk in this case can be financial too not just directly affecting life. I can't find specific details but these cubesats are delivered via a cargo supply load to the ISS and then launched from space. They are comparatively very VERY cheap compared to traditional satellite launch and control. Take a look at Planet Lab's website. They pride themselves on using terms like "off the shelf electronics" and "agile aerospace".
I'm going to take a guess and say
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Oh, but these are Cube-Sats, and we've got bright grad students designing them, and they're buying parts from little startup companies with 2 employees, and they're fashionable, and sexy, and gosh, shouldn't we all do cubesats now, because they're so much cheaper when you don't have to follow all those expensive rules that the big boys use. If it breaks, just launch another one.
Great when you deploy from a surplus missile first stage after the primary payload has been boosted to Geo Transfer orbit. Screw u
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I misread that as "IIS was hacked", and was thinking, "not surprised".
2001, oh how cute! (Score:2)
Of course the cubes launched themselves, they are baby obelisks. Perhaps they are hatching and leaving the nest.
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I pronounthed it wrong, I have a lith.
UFO? (Score:1)
Revolt of the Machines (Score:1)
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And that'll be their excuse when they come back long after dark:
"Where the hell have you been?!"
"Imaging Earth."
"Until this time of night? I was worried sick!"
"We were curious."
Cubesat Cannon? (Score:2)
Safety tip: A gun (or cannon) is always loaded.
I'm guessing that if they need to do any spacewalks they'll keep an eye on that thing.
North Korea did it. (Score:1)
Arthur Clarke Predicted This...almost (Score:2)
"Open the pod bay doors"
"HAI!"
Well, they were made in Japan...
Hal? Is that you? (Score:2)
I'm afraid I can't tell you Dave.
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Sandra Bullock (Score:1)
Any correlation to solar events? (Score:2)
Did these unintentional releases coincide with solar flares or CMEs hitting the station? Did they occur when the ISS was in the SAA [wikipedia.org]?
Isn't it a bit early (Score:1)
for SkyNet to become conscious?
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Most of us just want GM food labelled, not banned. How is that comparable to climate change?
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I didn't ask it for the entire world, just food sold in the USA. If non-halal-ness is important to the population of a given specific country, it makes sense for that country to use labeling in that country.
What do you mean by "extremely strict standards"?