SMARTPHONES ORBITED IN NEW AGE OF MINI-SATELLITES
By Mark Marquette
A new commercial rocket launch last week successfully put into orbit three mini-satellites that are competely operated by smartphones.
That’s right...if you have in your pocket or purse an HTC Nexus One smartphone, there are three mini-satellites orbiting the Earth with the same phone, running the mission with Google’s Android operating system.
And when we say a “mini-satellite,” how does fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand strike you? Well, the three “PhoneSats” called Alexander, Graham and Bell are each a “nanosatellite” that is a 4-inch cube, weighing just three pounds!
They were blasted into space on April 21st
aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.'s Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia. These three PhoneSats are destined to brake new ground in satellite technology and the commercialization of Earth orbit by space entrepreneurs.
Transmissions from all three PhoneSats have been received at multiple ground stations on Earth, indicating they are operating normally. The PhoneSat team at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., will continue to monitor the satellites, which are expected to remain in orbit for two weeks, until around May 6th.
NASA's off-the-shelf PhoneSats already have many of the systems needed for a satellite, including fast processors, versatile operating systems, multiple miniature sensors, high-resolution cameras, GPS receivers and several radios.
NASA engineers kept the total cost of the components for the three prototype satellites in the PhoneSat project between $3,500 and $7,000 by using primarily commercial hardware and keeping the design and mission objectives to a minimum.
Each smartphone is housed in a standard metal cube structure measuring about 4 inches square, insulated from harmful cosmic rays. The smartphone acts as the satellite's onboard computer. Its sensors are used for attitude determination and its camera for Earth observation.
Several things smartphones don’t have were added-- a larger, external lithium-ion battery and a more powerful radio for messages it sends from space. When the batteries die, the gyroscopes will fail and the mini-satellites will tumble and fall back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. The smartphone's ability to send and receive calls and text messages has been disabled.
It’s just the beginning of a new age of space entrepreneurs ready to provide access to low-earth orbit and maybe even the Moon.
At the core of dismantling the 30-year Space Shuttle in 2011 is the Obama Administration’s desire to nurture fledgling space entrepreneurs and help their access to space with knowledge from NASA.
The PhoneSat mission is a technology demonstration project developed through the agency's Small Spacecraft Technology Program, part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate. The directorate is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in future science and exploration missions. NASA's technology investments provide cutting-edge solutions for our nation's future.
Smartphones offer a wealth of potential capabilities for flying small, low-cost, powerful satellites for atmospheric or Earth science, communications, or other space-born applications. They also may open space to a whole new generation of commercial, academic and citizen-space users.
PhoneSat takes advantage of commercial products already imbued with speedy computing chips, lots of memory and ultra-tiny sensors like high-resolution cameras and navigation devices.
The two battery-powered PhoneSat 1.0 spacecraft are joined in outer space by a beta version of PhoneSat 2.0 . PhoneSat 2.0 is built around an updated Nexus S smartphone made by Samsung Electronics which runs Google’s Android operating system to provide a faster core processor, avionics and gyroscopes. PhoneSat 2.0 has small solar panels to enable longer-duration missions and a GPS receiver. It also has magnetorquer coils—electro-magnets that interact with Earth’s magnetic field—as well as reaction wheels to actively control the satellite’s orientation in space.
As part of the Obama Administration's recognition of the critical role that space technology and innovation will play in enabling both future space missions and bettering life here on Earth. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has created the Space Technology Mission Directorate. The directorate will be a catalyst for the creation of technologies and innovation needed to maintain NASA leadership in space while also benefiting America's economy.
And one of the first small steps of that “space directorate” are three cellphones that jumped out of a pant’s pocket and into Earth orbit. Definitely another giant leap for mankind!
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