Someday, swarms of satellites the size of a tissue box will be
snapping pictures, taking environmental readings and broadcasting
messages from orbit — but the entities controlling those satellites
won't be governments.
Instead, they'll be hard-core hobbyists and
elementary-school students, entrepreneurs and hacktivists. In short,
anyone who can afford a few hundred dollars to send something to the
final frontier.
The technology for this outer-space revolution
already exists: It's a type of satellite known as a CubeSat, which
measures just 4 inches (10 centimeters) on a side. The CubeSat
phenomenon started out as an educational experiment, but now it's
turning into a crowdsourcing, crowdfunding movement of Kickstarter
proportions. And not even the sky is the limit.
This year alone,
more than two dozen CubeSats are due to go into orbit, piggybacking on
commercial and government space launches.
"We had no idea CubeSats
would go so far," Jordi Puig-Suari, an engineering professor at Cal
Poly who is considered one of the inventors of the
CubeSat concept,
told NBC News in an email. "We were trying to develop a better system
to educate students, and we did succeed at that. ... But we also created
a whole new space ecosystem that we could not imagine at the time."
Startup for the Space AgePart
of that ecosystem is taking shape in a squat, gray building at the foot
of a highway on-ramp in San Francisco. That's where a company called
NanoSatisfi
has brought together a small team of aerospace veterans and computer
engineers to build CubeSats by hand, amid surroundings that look more
like a Web startup's office than a space agency's clean room.
"We
take advantage of all the industries on earth, from cellphones to
smartphones to UAVs, robotics, all of that," said Peter Platzer, a
former research physicist and Wall Street trader who co-founded
NanoSatisfi last year.
It all starts with a hobbyist computer called an
Arduino. For less than $200, anyone can buy an Arduino — basically a stripped-down motherboard — and start building gadgets like a
self-balancing skateboard, a
band of LEGO robots, or a
flame-throwing pumpkin.
The
engineers at NanoSatisfi decided to put those Arduinos to a more
serious use: They installed the low-cost computers inside the standard
CubeSat frame. NanoSatisfi’s first two satellites, dubbed ArduSats, will
hitch a ride in August on a robotic Japanese cargo ship heading for the
International Space Station — where they'll be kicked out into space
using a
spring-loaded launcher.
From Kickstarter to spaceThe cost of building
each ArduSat is close to $200,000, and launch costs amount to another
$100,000 or so. That's far less than the price tag for large-scale
satellites, which can range from
$100 million to
more than $1 billion. To get the project launched, Platzer and his partners raised more than $100,000 through a
Kickstarter campaign, and supplemented that amount with their own money and more than $1 million in venture-capital funding.
Once
the ArduSats are active, NanoSatisfi's clients will be able to conduct
their own experiments in space. Each satellite is equipped with 10
sensors — including a Geiger counter, a magnetometer and a camera. One
of the satellites will be dedicated to schools. The other will be rented
out at the rate of $250 per week, with special deals available for the
Kickstarter contributors. The company is developing a library of basic
apps for use on the satellites and publishing the apps online so that
anyone can tweak the programming.
CubeSats don't use expensive
rocket thrusters to control their orbit; instead, they rely on gyro-type
reaction wheels and compass-type magnetic devices to keep their
orientation steady. They stay in orbit for only a few months before
their orbits decay and they burn up in the atmosphere. But the low cost
of a CubeSat means it's relatively inexpensive to send up replacements.
NanoSatisfi
plans to launch as many as 150 more satellites over the next five
years. The first commercial applications will be in the education
market. "Our goal is to have 500,000 students in five years having
access to a satellite, and really make this a hands-on tool," Platzer
said.
ArduSats could also serve as the building blocks for a
low-cost weather monitoring network. For example, ski resorts could use
fine-scale temperature readings to determine when it makes financial
sense to pay for artificial snow generation. Platzer says, based on his
Wall Street experience, that such a network could unlock billions of
dollars in economic benefits.
Moonandback Media
Southern Stars founder Tim DeBenedictis talks about the SkyCube project
and how it connects with his company's SkySafari app. Watch the "Moon
and Back" interview at http://vimeo.com/47612071
Connection to the cosmosCubeSats'
biggest selling point may be their ability to give everyday people a
personal connection to the final frontier. That's what Tim DeBenedictis,
founder and owner of
Southern Stars, is counting on as he launches
SkyCube, a satellite system linked to a mobile app platform that will let people send images and short messages from orbit.
"We
all know that right now a lot of our communication goes through
satellites, but normally we don't think of that," he told NBC News. "We
want to have the experience of having a message broadcast from the
satellite, and having the satellite let you know."
SkyCube is
due to be included in a cargo shipment to the space station in December.
It will be shot into orbit with the same launching system used for the
ArduSats. DeBenedictis has also raised more than $100,000
through Kickstarter,
but also plans to cover costs through sponsorships. Once the satellite
is deployed, sponsors will be able to broadcast messages and receive
images from space for as little as $1 using the SkyCube mobile app.
"I fully expect this satellite to be revenue generating," DeBenedictis said.
SkyCube
also has a built-in answer to the problem of too much space junk. About
three months after deployment, the satellite will inflate a
70-foot-wide (21-meter-wide) balloon coated with reflective titanium
dioxide powder. The balloon, visible from the ground, should create
enough drag to bring the satellite down for planned destruction.
"We call that the grand finale to the mission," DeBenedictis said. "I don't think that's ever been done before with a CubeSat."
Sprites in the satelliteAnother innovative
CubeSat will be sprung into space during SpaceX's next cargo run to the
space station — and this one, KickSat, has a novel twist.
Tucked
within the already tiny satellite are 128 cracker-sized computer chips
known as "sprites." Each sprite is equipped with solar cells as well as a
radio transceiver, microcontroller, gyroscope and magnetometer. As the
chips flutter in space, they'll broadcast an identifying signal — for
example, the coded initials of a Kickstarter donor.
Why? The idea
is to test the potential for monitoring the space environment with
swarms of nano-nanosatellites. "We don't have a big science goal in
mind," Cornell University doctoral student Zachary Manchester, who
initiated the project, told NBC News. "It's just trying to demonstrate
that you can build a satellite that works on this scale."
KickSat raised nearly $75,000 through a
Kickstarter campaign, and will get a free launch, thanks to NASA's
Educational Launch of Nanosatellites program.
To orbit and beyondBob Twiggs,
an engineering professor at Morehead State University in Kentucky who
worked with Puig-Suari to come up with the CubeSat concept in 1999, says
he's now working on a project to launch 2-inch-wide (5-centimeter-wide)
"femtosatellites" called
PocketQubs. Those should theoretically launch for one-eighth the cost of a CubeSat. If CubeSats are the iPhones of the satellite world,
PocketQubs are the
iPod Nanos.
"I
always said I hoped it'd be like the Apple computer, and I think it's
making that kind of change — which is really cool," Twiggs told NBC
News.
It may not be long before CubeSats start going beyond Earth
orbit: Scientists and engineers are working on schemes to send the
nanosatellites
to the moon, or
to the outer solar system. (A
Kickstarter campaign for interplanetary CubeSats is in progress right now.)
Eventually, putting a satellite into outer space could be as easy as
sending camera-equipped balloons into the stratosphere — in other words,
so easy a 7-year-old could do it.
"Realistically,
in the next couple of years, it's going to be possible to put a sprite
into orbit for less than $1,000, so that will bring it within the reach
of hobbyists and high-school students for science fairs," Manchester
said. "It's the sort of thing I wish I had when I was a kid."
More about small satellites:
Matt Rivera is a senior producer at NBC News Digital. He invites you to follow him on Twitter as @mattmrivera, on Instagram and on Google+.
Alan Boyle is NBC News Digital's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding +Alan Boyle to your Google+ circles. To keep up with NBCNews' stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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