That is a great link on micro sats. Thanks Henry.
Attention all hams, check out the radios and the use of a Kantronics TNC beefed up
for space telemetry.
Perhaps the Voodoo statement was wrong, if taken out of context. The long list
of sponsors certainly would make lots of things possible. Having a universities
facilities at your disposal could be of some help ;-) and even so there were a
lot of TBD's in the schedule. It would be interesting to figure the man hours
needed to develop one of those micro sats and compare it to the time put into
KISS. Apples and oranges of course, the commonality being the humans required to
completion of project.
I wonder if ERPS could be part of such a flyby mission? Perhaps an engine or
sub assembly, if lucky an entire booster.
Henry Spencer wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Jul 2002, Alex Fraser wrote:
> > ERPS will not be able to take a picture of an object passing near the earth.
> > Not a close up. You couldn't get the picture back to earth anyway, so what's
> > the point?
>
> Perhaps not ERPS itself, but there are people in the small-satellite
> community who know how to do such things on less-than-NASA budgets. Not
> trivial -- might take more than one try to get it right -- but possible.
>
> > If you got close by some stroke of luck...
>
> Not luck -- onboard propulsion, plus optical navigation.
>
> > then how would you aim the camera?
>
> Attitude control system. Probably reaction wheels, low-precision rate
> sensors, and a star tracker.
>
> > Oh radio control, is that what you are thinking? Then how are you
> > going to aim the antenna?
>
> Attitude control, plus possibly (depending on design) a movable antenna
> mount.
>
> > If you get away with a small antenna on the craft, then you need a good
> > bit of gain on the terrestrial side (path loss!).
>
> Correct. Big antenna dishes exist. For example, Stanford has a big
> radio-astronomy dish -- it was used in the hunt for signals from Mars
> Polar Lander.
>
> > You of course would need to have
> > antennas all the way around the planet as it seems to spin on a daily basis.
>
> Continuous coverage is nice, but for a brief asteroid encounter, you can
> plan the encounter so it's within view of your main ground station.
>
> > Space based, can you rent airtime?
>
> There are no space-based antennas at this time. However, you can rent
> airtime on global ground-based antenna networks.
>
> > just how would you actually
> > move the hopefully stable machine into that orientation and keep it there?
> > Motive force?
>
> Reaction wheels. Commercially available for small spacecraft. Probably
> need a custom design for something this small. A hassle but possible.
> Cold-gas jets might be simpler for a brief mission.
>
> > One kilogram? A box filled with voodoo?
>
> No, filled with electronics. See ssdl.stanford.edu/cubesat for some idea
> of what's possible with one kilogram these days.
>
> Henry Spencer
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
........ Alex Fraser N3DER .........
......... [EMAIL PROTECTED] .......
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