KickSat -- Your personal spacecraft in space!

• Yoorah wrote on 2011-10-11 04:05
  Something interesting I came across. :)
  
  [video=youtube;vqkXtgbmu20]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqkXtgbmu20[/video]
  
  Would you like to have your own spacecraft in space?
  
  I'm Zac Manchester, a graduate student in Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. Over the last several years a few collaborators and I have designed, built, and tested a very tiny and inexpensive spacecraft called Sprite that can be built and launched into low Earth orbit for just a few hundred dollars each!
  
  The Big Picture
  
  My goal is to bring down the huge cost of spaceflight, allowing anyone from a curious high school student or basement tinkerer to a professional scientist to explore what has until now been the exclusive realm of governments and large companies. By shrinking the spacecraft, we can fit more into a single launch slot and split the costs many ways. I want to make it easy enough and affordable enough for anyone to explore space.
  
  The Sprite Spacecraft
  
  

  [Image: http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/3353/sprite1sm.png]

  
  
  Sprites are the size of a couple of postage stamps but have solar cells, a radio transceiver, and a microcontroller (tiny computer) with memory and sensors - many of the capabilities a bigger spacecraft would have, just scaled down. This first version can’t do much more than transmit its name and a few bits of data - think of it as a shrunken down Sputnik - but future versions could include any type of sensor that will fit, from thermometers to cameras.
  
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  Sounds pretty awesome. But he needs to raise $30,000 in order to develop the satellite that will launch all the tiny Sprites. You can help by donating to the cause. Because there is a deadline for the funds (Dec 3), the project will probably get cancelled if they don't get enough funds by then and you will keep your money. :<
  
  Donating $1 or more will get your name listed on their site as a backer.
  $25 gets your name printed on one of KickSat's panels.
  $75 will also get you a replica of a Sprite satellite.
  $300 will also make you a sponsor of a single Sprite, which will allow you to name it and program a 4 character message for it to send to earth. :D
  There's also more benefits for higher donation amounts, but I doubt it's interesting to anyone here!
  
  More info on their site: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/251588730/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space
  
  So what do you think? Do you see yourself participating in this? :3
• TA wrote on 2011-10-11 05:55
  We don't need to junk up space with this crap... >_>
• System wrote on 2011-10-11 06:54

  Quote from TA;615786:

  We don't need to junk up space with this crap... >_>

  
  
  And I quote:
  "Because we will only launch KickSat into a low-altitude orbit, we can guarantee that all of the Sprites will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere within a few days or weeks, leaving no trace of space debris. KickSat itself will last somewhat longer, but should burn up in the atmosphere within a few months."
• Osayidan wrote on 2011-10-11 16:59
  I would be interested in this if it could go past earth orbit, and drift off into space somewhere while sending data back. Would be interesting to have some organization launch a ton of them that either independently each sends back a different type of data collected with its sensor, or if they could all work together somehow by communicating together by radio signals. Maybe get some arduinos in there too to make it really fun.
  
  Seems like a good step towards that direction but I won't personally invest any time or money into something that's in its first steps and doesn't show any solid signs of going anywhere.