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Discussion Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: ChrstphrR on July 12, 2020, 06:05:43 am

Title: Don't click here if you hate how micro satellites are littering the sky...
Post by: ChrstphrR on July 12, 2020, 06:05:43 am

Man, I love ArsTechnica...  been reading it for nearly all 2.1x10^1 centuries it's been around for.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/how-small-satellites-are-radically-remaking-space-exploration/

Excerpt:

Quote

NASA had several goals with its MarCO spacecraft, said Andy Klesh, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who served as technical lead for the mission. CubeSats had never flown beyond low-Earth orbit before. So during their six-month transit to Mars, the MarCOs proved small satellites could thrive in deep space, control their attitudes and, upon reaching their destination, use a high-gain antenna to stream data back home at 8 kilobits per second.

I hope the people that worry they can't see the night sky with go apoplectic when they realize the Lizard people are NOT going to be happy with us littering space with our sciency little metal coke cans all over the solar system and beyond.

Also -- the 8kbit rate is a bit slow, but let's face it -- it's faster than what most people can type, so pretty good as far as I'm concerned for intra-planetary satellite communication.

Title: Re: Don't click here if you hate how micro satellites are littering the sky...
Post by: rachel on July 15, 2020, 11:08:28 am

This is awesome! Those MarCO cubesats were the ones that flew with the NASA InSight mission

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8344/nasa-cubesats-steer-toward-mars/?site=insight

InSight is a lander on mars that used the cubesats to relay information back to earth as it was landing