Kicksat burned up, including Sprites

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space/posts/843807

by jmpe • 12 years ago

83 31 12 years ago

6581• 12 years ago

Unfortunate turn of events - the on-board computer reset after launch (probably due to radiation) and with it the timer for releasing the sprite femtosatellites, and the radio receiver didn't work due to insufficient supply voltage, so the sprites couldn't be released manually either.

sigil• 12 years ago

Were the components radiation-hardened, or did they just wing it?

akiselev4• 12 years ago

Aerospace grade radiation hardened computers start in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU and with a cost equal to or greater (usually the latter) than the launch cost, they just aren't worth it for CubeSats that aren't carrying critical payloads (piggy back launches are $200-500k depending on institution affiliation).

A little shielding is enough to protect the CPU from permanent damage for a while and error correction circuits using 3-7 or more CPUs running in parallel is way cheaper, even including engineering costs, than a single CPU.

Even with the troubles, one hell of a success for $70,000.

dethtron5000• 12 years ago

Has no one learned from the Fantastic Four's rocket trip?

fyrabanks• 12 years ago

This is why NASA spends millions, not tens of thousands, of dollars to send things to space.

comex• 12 years ago

Of course, it will cost "only" tens of thousands of dollars to make a second try after getting real-life experience from the first one...

kenrikm• 12 years ago

No NASA Spends Billions. Cost does not equal value when you're going to space, SpaceX proves that.

z3phyr• 12 years ago

I have heard that neuromorphic analog computers do not need to be radiation hardened. Also they are very power efficient. Can more research work on this side bring the cost of onboard control computers down?

pjc50• 12 years ago

Where did you hear that? Inherently any analog system will be more vulnerable to noise. Also, they're not deterministic.

adestefan• 12 years ago

These are in such low orbit that they're still within the Van Allen belts. Vibration during launch rattling something loose is the more likely culprit.

steve19• 12 years ago

One backer paid $10,000 to be the person who hit the big red button that would launch all the 'sprites' into space... damn.

nkozyra• 12 years ago

They can still hit a big red button, I guess.

icantthinkofone• 12 years ago

I've not followed this at all but the ARRL was launching satellites decades ago when I was a ham. Whatever happened to all that? (Yeah, I guess I should be Googling.)

abruzzi• 12 years ago

There are actually a bunch up there:

http://oscar.dcarr.org

Gracana• 12 years ago

I remember AO-40 when I was first getting into ham radio around the millennium. They experienced quite a slew of problems with that one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AO-40

coldcode• 12 years ago

It really is rocket science. Putting stuff into space is always hard.

comrh• 12 years ago

Awesome project. I think it is pretty imaginative. What about the idea that sending a bunch of rocket payloads up there would add to the space debris already up there though?

pekk• 12 years ago

"Up there" often doesn't mean a stable orbit.

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

Ooops. I'm happy PhoneSat worked.

eps2• 12 years ago

Wait, wait ... So they were asking for 30K, got 70K and that let them hitch a ride on a NASA rocket and have a satellite deployed. This seems oddly affordable. What am I missing?

dm2• 12 years ago

The KickSat was very small, about half the size of a desktop computer.

There are satellites that are bus-sized and have antennas as large as a football field (5-6 tons and 350 foot antennas) floating around up there, those are the billion dollar ones. Their computer components are hundreds and thousands of times what consumer grade components cost, plus the satellites sometimes have stealth technologies, boosters, and extremely expensive cameras and other sensors.

The KickSat hardware was consumer grade, which was most of the reason for the low cost, the lack of sufficiently radiation hardened components also was the reason it malfunctioned according to their update.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CubeSat

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NROL-32b_ULA_21NOV201... carrying one large satellite

Kicksat burned up, including Sprites

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