NASA to use consumer Android smartphones in new satellites

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/crosscutting_capability/edison/phonesat.html

by anigbrowl • 14 years ago

168 100 14 years ago

nasa.gov

digikata• 14 years ago

I wonder how they address radiation hardening and other space specific environmental drivers in this hardware.

est• 14 years ago

Use a shield.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

Of lead? At $10,000/lb launch cost?

greenyoda• 14 years ago

Radiation, such as cosmic rays, would tend to cause transient bit errors in memory that would cause the phone to crash or otherwise stop working. The article mentions that they have a circuit that automatically re-boots the phone when it stops transmitting a signal, so it can recover from these problems.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

Wow. That's surprisingly un-NASA. I wonder if they have qualified the MTBF? For this kind of solution to work, it'd have to be at least a couple hours.

wtracy2• 14 years ago

Is radiation hardening really that important when you're still this side of the Van Allen belt? My understanding is that it's not, but IANARS.

JosephRedfern• 14 years ago

Yes, it is. http://www.solarstorms.org/SEUavionics.pdf

emiliobumachar• 14 years ago

Even airliners start having issues at 30000 ft.

StuieK6• 14 years ago

We have short operating lifetimes and use orbits that minimise this problem.

Mythbusters• 14 years ago

From reading the article, there is no reason why Android was chosen specifically. So this experiment could have been done with any modern smartphone out there, they just happen to choose a couple of android phones. Is that right?

maclaren• 14 years ago

I imagine the comment about having a "versatile operating system" has something to do with it.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

I've got nothing to do with this project and only know what I read in the linked article but the seemingly obvious reason they'd use Android phones, especially Nexus phones, is that they run on a nearly fully open source stack (minus some binary drivers), so you can go as deep into the internals as you want without resorting to jailbreaking and/or a lot of reverse engineering.

tomjakubowski• 14 years ago

Wouldn't you still need to root the phone? The stack is definitely more open than on iOS though.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

Between the cheapness and flexibility of Android it makes it a pretty obvious choice, no?

kalleboo• 14 years ago

Other NASA pages about this project seem to emphasize the "Open source" qualities of the project. There's also language like "with the goal of allowing anyone with space ambitions to launch their own satellite".

For instance, most other major options (elephant in the room being Apple), have onerous terms for their accessory development kits which would preclude that. Last I checked, Apple even keep the Dock port pinout "confidential" from people not in their accessory dev program, which would be a show-stopper since presumably this uses the dock/USB port for control.

jcromartie2• 14 years ago

What else would they use? It seems pretty obvious to go with Android.

roedog5• 14 years ago

NASA flies a lot with VxWorks. They could have ported it to the nexus.

surgeterrix• 14 years ago

My guess is the same reason ArduSat uses phone hardware.

All the sensors one might want on a Satellite (motions sensors, cameras, magnetic field detection) are all built into phones now. Android (or more to the point Android's Linux kernel) is specifically compiled to be compatible with most of that hardware. So less work for them as opposed to using another version of Linux.

humbyvaldes• 14 years ago

Not so much with Android, but so much of Nasa's technology has spread to the private sector it's nice to see them using this to their advantage.

mrj• 14 years ago

I bet they'll be stuck on 2.1 forever.

joenathan2• 14 years ago

I know this is sort of a joke, but the Nexus S shipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and it's been updated to Android 4.1 Jellybean as of July 20th.

veemjeem• 14 years ago

Is the update for the Nexus S OTA? I haven't gotten mine yet. In fact, I haven't gotten the 4.0 (ICS) OTA yet. I heard they released a version but pulled it... I have yet to see anything beyond 2.3 for my Nexus S.

pfedor• 14 years ago

Why is it important to make satellites which are cheap to build? Isn't the total cost dominated by the cost of bringing it to orbit anyway?

benologist• 14 years ago

Check out the pics on the side - they're using a balloon, I don't know if that gets it all the way there but hobbyists do it - one of the more popular hn'ers does it and has blogged about it a but but I forget who.

Doesn't look like anyone's reached space yet but:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/hackers-launch-satellites-120...

Interesting discussion on some guys who reached 100,000 feet:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1750517

Edit: actually they're launching via rocket -

"Three NASA PhoneSats systems (two PhoneSat 1.0's and one PhoneSat 2.0) are scheduled to launch aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va., later this year. "

simonw• 14 years ago

jgc does that: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-flight.html

lukifer• 14 years ago

I imagine that part of the benefit to making small satellites is the ability to deploy a lot of them. Also, it's a good PR move when public perception is that NASA is bloated and wasteful. (Please, nobody give your opinion for or against that; I don't care :P)

abraham• 14 years ago

It would also be about size. If they can fit 10 satellites in the space used by a typical one it would make launch a lot more cost-effective.

natep5• 14 years ago

Sorry if I'm being too nitpicky here, but NASA isn't actually innovating on size, here. They're putting everything in the standard 10cm^3 cubesat envelope. And they can fit a whole lot more than 10 satellites in the mass+volume of a typical one. And they can basically stow away on a rocket whose primary mission is one of those larger satellites.

Edit: For innovation on size, check out KickSat

jkaljundi• 14 years ago

The average Cubesat launch price now is under $40k, but it keeps going down. Nasa now has $20k launch opportunities: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=38673 and some others have under $20k as well it seems: http://www.interorbital.com/

natep5• 14 years ago

I think it's important to make everything cheaper, even if you do get the most bang for your buck from reducing the cost of launch.

The other advantage in having NASA lead the way in the cheap satellite area, it will be easier for others to take advantage of cheap launches when they are eventually available. And possibly help create demand.

StuieK6• 14 years ago

In addition to the other comments they also can launch multiple at the same time for redundancy.

ZoFreX• 14 years ago

They are tiny as well, so in one launch you could put a LOT of them up there! For some kinds of operations, it's better to aim for 95% reliability and put quite a few in orbit, than to go to the expense of 99% reliability.

brudgers• 14 years ago

When I think of cell phones in orbit, the thought which comes to mind is "space junk." Putting lots of small objects in orbit cheaply sounds like a good way to increase the odds of something big, expensive, and possibly manned suffering a catastrophic collision.

Gravityloss• 14 years ago

No, the satellite is usually the expensive part.

Also, the reasons for not making launches cheaper has been "why is it important to make launches cheap? Isn't the total cost dominated by the cost of the satellite anyway?"

Also, ground processing and all can get very expensive because it requires so many people and clean rooms etc and can be delayed. It depends if you think it's part of the satellite or the launch cost.

Overall you need to start somewhere if you want cheaper spaceflight. If there are cheaper satellites, then that's a big incentive for developing cheaper means of launching (and launching much more often too!).

It's partly a chicken and egg style thing. Launches are extremely expensive and far between and the big standing armies and facilities sit unused but have to be trained, maintained and paid. It's hard to break that circle, but it will be done, probably through some totally new technology that is first seen as just toys.

Retric• 14 years ago

It cost's over 20k to launch a Cubesat it often costs far less than that to build them. Build costs and R&D can be hard to separate, but the replacement costs for many generic satellites are often well below the launch costs.

danielweber• 14 years ago

Expensive launch encourages expensive satellites. Expensive satellites encourage expensive launch. It's a vicious cycle.

mturmon3• 14 years ago

Space is a unique and unusual place. Usually the stuff that goes up there is also unique and unusual (hyperspectral radiometers, synthetic aperture radars, rovers). So it's expensive to engineer.

The cubesats (this is one) were developed as a way to prototype ideas and to get a larger segment of people involved in space activity. They are squeezed in to other launches. They're a very special case.

The phenomenon of cheaper, experimental missions is fractal. There are technology demonstration missions at many different price points (up to the 100s of millions of dollar range) that may have fairly modest science goals, but they're trying to show that some exotic bit(s) of tech (autonomous landing, laser communications) can work in space.

malkia• 14 years ago

Maybe it would be a huge experiment in redundancy fault-tolerant computing.

shinratdr2• 14 years ago

...This raises questions about that other article that claimed everything had to be specially hardened to withstand radiation, no?

I had always assumed that was the case and the article text was obvious, but if we can launch off the shelf Android devices into space with no problems then why are the other NASA projects utilizing such out of date hardware?

fchollet• 14 years ago

Surely the phone is going to be radiation-shielded inside the satellite. I see no critical contraction here...

shinratdr2• 14 years ago

Right but if we can just simply "radiation-sheild" off the shelf devices, why didn't we do that instead of custom building a robot made of specifically radiation hardened parts that are also much more expensive?

Why was the most important consideration by far for the processor in the previous NASA project was designed from the ground up to be radiation-hardned, but yet we can launch this no problem?

I just don't get it. I also don't appreciate the downvotes. I'm not trolling or looking to start an argument. I don't have dog in this race, I'm genuinely confused.

ramchip• 14 years ago

I'm not convinced. Shielding against cosmic rays would require very heavy, thick lead walls to get any significant protection.

natep5• 14 years ago

I'm guessing that these spacecraft have none of the mission requirements that most others have. They're not doing a flyby mission where they have to work during the flyby, or doing anything actually critical (such as provide comms/science, or use propulsion). The system is designed to reboot in the case of problems, which

The closest to a mission goal I can find in the post is "This approach allows engineers to see what capabilities commercial technologies can provide, rather than trying to custom-design technology solutions to meet set requirements." So the only goal is to see _if_ they work.

Trust me, if other missions could get away with less shielding, they would. That's one reason why RBSP[1] is being launched, so we can better understand the radiation environment in Earth's orbit, so future missions aren't undershielded or sent up with unneccessary shielding. But I doubt that most big-budget missions could get away with no shielding.

[1] Shameless plug/full disclosure: I have been working on this project for the last 2+ years, and am now one of its flight controllers. For updates, you can check rbsp.jhuapl.edu or http://spaceflightnow.com/atlas/av032/status.html

wtracy2• 14 years ago

As soon as you cross the Van Allen belt you're exposed to the full blast of the solar wind, and standard electronics start failing. You can reach orbit without crossing this belt, so my understanding is that in low Earth orbit you're still shielded enough from the solar wind for it to not be a deal-breaker.

Assuming that you're referring to the stories about the Mars rover, Mars isn't geologically active enough to have its own equivalent of Earth's Van Allen belt, so the Martian surface is directly blasted by radiation originating from the solar wind. Any computer hardware going there will almost certainly need to be radiation hardened.

tl;dr: LEO != Mars

mturmon3• 14 years ago

Even in LEO (say, ~200 miles), the South Atlantic Anomaly can cause significant SEUs to standard hardware. But as you say, once you get higher than this, it gets really bad.

sylvinus• 14 years ago

Will all these cheap satellites (from NASA or hobbyists, there are a couple of them on Kickstarter) cleanly de-orbit themselves or are we just adding up to the space junk at this point?

StuieK6• 14 years ago

They are all put into orbits that decay to prevent this problem.

cromwellian2• 14 years ago

Wonder if Apple will sue to get an injunction against the launch. :)

option_greek• 14 years ago

Not unless the satellites are rounded of course :)

skeletonjelly• 14 years ago

They'll be bared from entering into a rounded orbit.

nivla• 14 years ago

They also have to ensure there aren't any objects that might bounce back during lift off. :)

melling• 14 years ago

The rounded joke is the easy one to make, of course. However, Apple did lose against Samsung on that count. There must be some sort of herding mentality that people go through, where people in general grab onto sound bites, instead of taking the time to do a deep dive into the issues. It usually happens in politics. On HN, I would hope for more.

pooriaazimi2• 14 years ago

With all respect, this isn't the kind of comment I've come to expect from HN lot on a serious article like this. It belongs to Verge/TechCrunch/Engadget/Gizmodo, or the the articles about the court ruling (those from yesterday).

esolyt• 14 years ago

Actually the comment had a purpose and was trying to raise awareness. The fact that it made you angry perhaps shows that it worked? Perhaps it might make you reconsider your opinions about your favorite company.

josteink• 14 years ago

Fact: In the current tech-landscape it's hard to think about innovative Android-devices launched without anticipating Apple filing anti-competitive lawsuits.

You reap what you saw. It's kalled karma. In the tech-sector, Apple's main perception is now largely as the lawsuit-company.

mitchty• 14 years ago

I thought I was the only one. The whole sports team like us versus them of the Apple/Android "wars" is getting old. I grew up in the Ford vs Chevy part of the US, I don't see much difference between the two and I'm getting sick of the whole litigation "notnews" being paraded around constantly to get pageviews.

Its getting to the point I don't even look at Android or Apple posts here because I know I'll start seeing the same memes yet again.

I think its time to stop going to HN, I don't see this improving anytime soon. I know, internet drama and all that but for once I would like to be able to read about the tech without the snark.

arrrg• 14 years ago

Worse. It’s a typical YouTube comment. Utterly devoid of content and insight. Also incredibly dumb.

cromwellian2• 14 years ago

You're right, it was a drive by comment, I'm big enough to admit it. My irritation has been building over software patents for years and it is leaking into a lot of my posts, not always a good thing to have anger cloud your thinking.

I did learn one incredibly useful thing from this thread however, was that Boeing has a patent on specific orbital mechanics, you know, the kinds of stuff people use to write papers about in the scientific realm for centuries for free transmission of knowledge. I suppose the next step is actually patenting scientific discoveries, like publishing a theory of Quantum Gravity via the USPTO instead of via Nature or the physics preprint service.

aspratley• 14 years ago

Let's just hope Apple haven't patented smartphones in space already.

Tichy2• 14 years ago

Wonder how they solve the orientation problem.

StuieK6• 14 years ago

I worked on this project for a few months. We ran everything like a typical agile startup with weekly iterations and a lot of testing "MVPs". Really cool project. Also its all going to be opensourced! http://open.nasa.gov/plan/phonesat/

natep5• 14 years ago

That's awesome! Is following @NASA_Phonesat the best way to find out when that happens?

StuieK6• 14 years ago

Yep!

drzaiusapelord• 14 years ago

What was your radiation testing like? My understanding is that there's a lot of skepticism that this thing will run for very long. NASA uses hardened processors to make sure radiation from outside the atmosphere doesn't affect electronics and using an off-the-shelf SoC built on a tight whatever nm processes has never been done before for fears of early mortality.

The only exception I can think of is laptops on the ISS and on the space shuttle, but those were within the shielding of the craft. On top of that, those laptops are hardened against radiation. I believe they took off the shelf Lenovo Thinkpads and added some shielding.

roedog5• 14 years ago

I'm guessing that the weather balloon got high enough where it might experience some radiation. I'm curious if they experienced any watchdog timer resets during that test flight.

jhaglund• 14 years ago

These are probably low earth orbit satellites, still protected by the geomagnetic field and their orbits wouldn't spend much time in the Van Allen belt.

To be safe, I imagine they gave the phone a tinfoil hat.

jhull• 14 years ago

And you thought Apple was famous for their "product launches"

raverbashing• 14 years ago

Looks like the Mythbusters will be invited for this next product launch and they will bring a lot of explosives with them.

rjzzleep• 14 years ago

weird why not just use openembedded ? i forgot what the other one was called.

jcromartie2• 14 years ago

This is exactly what I was thinking about after the Curiosity launch. Space exploration desperately needs to iterate faster, and tiny satellites running commodity hardware/OS designs. Android seems perfect for this, considering how easy it would be to deploy updates as .apk files, develop USB peripherals, etc..

The article doesn't mention anything about radiation hardening, though. Are they just not worried about it, because the idea is to make the satellite as cheap as possible?

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

By the sounds of things, these are temporary satellites not supposed to last for very long, so the long-term aspects of radiation damage might not be such an issue.

roedog5• 14 years ago

This is an interesting experiment. I think it creates an opportunity to discuss the whole cost picture. COTS alone will only achieve minor cost reductions relative to the whole enterprise.

Testing costs were orders of magnitude more than the cell phones. They ran tests with Thermal Vac, vibe and shock, and weather balloon. Each test required time at expensive test facilities and hundreds of hours.

Launch and operations will require additional hundreds of hours of labor to prepare and collect data. It will also require time on expensive range assets.

For example, a launch readiness review, where they determine if everything is ready to go, would involve a dozen engineers for a few hours. This meeting alone would cost more than the all the phones they bought to test on the ground and fly.

pjungwir• 14 years ago

I'm sure it will take a long, gradual process, but I hope that using cheap components will lessen the cost of failure, so we can spend less on testing, too. Now if only we could reduce the cost of launch....

roedog5• 14 years ago

Yeah, cost control is a perennial problem. I think it is so hard to solve because, it seems to me, that any solution must address interlocking technical, cultural, commercial, and policy & political concerns all together.

NASA to use consumer Android smartphones in new satellites

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