[TWIAR] DIY satellites reinvent the space race

[Greg Williams]

Published: September 14, 2005, 4:00 AM PDT
By Michael Kanellos 
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

http://news.com.com/DIY+satellites+reinvent+the+space+race/2100-11397_3-5863
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Soon, Romania, Colombia and a high school in San Jose, Calif., will join the
space race. 

An ambitious program called CubeSat, developed at Stanford University and
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, is giving students
and companies the opportunity to build and launch functional satellites into
low Earth orbit, or about 240 to 360 miles above the planet. 

The satellites are tiny--they weigh a kilogram and generally measure about
10 centimeters on each side--but they cost far less than conventional
commercial satellites. A CubeSat unit costs roughly $40,000 to build and
only $40,000 to launch. As part of the program, Cal Poly takes care of the
bureaucratic and logistical hurdles. 
 
By contrast, a conventional satellite can run between $150 million and $250
million to build and $100 million to launch. 

"I kind of look at this as the Apple II. The ordinary person can get
something into space," said Bob Twiggs, a professor of aeronautics and
astronautics at Stanford and one of the principals behind CubeSat. "We don't
know what the ultimate use is, but look what happened to the Internet." 

In the early 1980s, the Apple II was one of the very first personal
computers to catch on with the general public. In the 1990s, the Internet
exploded into mainstream use after years of being a quiet academic byway.
Can the same happen with satellites? 

While the CubeSats can't compete with commercial satellites in terms of
performance, they're more than just orbital knickknacks. Stanford and a
company called QuakeFinder launched a triple CubeSat in 2003 that monitored
seismic energy emitting from faults, which can be a precursor to
earthquakes. Every time the QuakeSat flew over the San Andreas Fault, low
levels of energy were detected, Twiggs said. A second-generation version is
being designed for a 2008 launch. 

A University of Tokyo CubeSat propelled by solar panels, meanwhile, sends
down compressed digital photos taken with a low-resolution camera. So far,
nine have been launched and three more will go up in the spring. 

"I didn't think they could do it, but I get a digital photo every week,"
Twiggs said. 

The program is giving students at different schools a hands-on opportunity
to work on spacecraft, an avenue of research that otherwise would be largely
out of reach. A group of Romanian students at the University of Bucharest
and sponsored by the Romanian Space Agency are currently crafting three
different CubeSats, while Twiggs is advising students at Colombia's
Universidad Sergio Arboleda on how to put one together. 

"They've never built one in Romania before, the same with Colombia," he
said. "We're creating a whole new generation of students really genuinely
interested in space." 

Meanwhile, a group of students at Independence High School in San Jose,
Calif., are working with one of Twiggs' graduate students and aerospace
giant Lockheed Martin on the KatySat program. Once built, Katysat (which
stands for "kids are never too young for satellites") is expected to
exchange messages between Independence and another high school somewhere on
the globe. The teenagers will also learn to plot Katysat's location, get the
satellite to send signals to their counterparts at the other school and
perform experiments. 

While space is no longer the playground of government agencies, most of the
private individuals tinkering with travel to the cosmos are incredibly
wealthy. Technology entrepreneur Greg Olsen, for instance, is splurging on a
junket to the International Space Station early this fall to the tune of
about $20 million. Other deep-pocketed space dabblers include Amazon.com's
Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen 

Space Age Klondike Bar
Twiggs began to tinker with the possibility of creating small, cheap
satellites in the mid-1980s when research budgets were at risk. In 1994,
while teaching at Weber State University in Utah, Twiggs and others worked
on a satellite that "was about the size of a lady's hatbox," he recalled. 

A few years later, the idea then emerged that a mother satellite could be
used to launch smaller, "pico" satellites. An experimental version, which
had daughter satellites about the size of a Klondike bar equipped with solar
panels, worked well. Later, Twiggs used a 4-inch-long Beanie Baby box as a
design ideal. 

The configuration of the CubeSats varies, depending on the tasks the
designers hope to accomplish. While some have a footprint of about 4 inches
by 12 inches, the typical ones are around 4 inches cubed. 
 
Previous Next The CubeSats get launched out of the Poly Picosatellite
Orbital Deployer, or P-POD, designed by Jordi Puig-Suari, a professor at Cal
Poly. The spring-loaded P-Pod can carry up to three of the cubes and
protects the CubeSats from the primary payload, and vice versa. 

Cal Poly's expertise also comes in handy in logistics. Companies such as
Eurokot and Kosmotras perform the actual launch, which take place at
locations like the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. Some of the
rockets used in the flights were originally designed for nuclear warheads
and launch from silos. Thus, the launches require export licenses and
coordination with a variety of engineers and others. 

The university charges a fee of $40,000 for a launch and participants must
get the satellite to them two months before lift-off. Despite the modest
scale, the undertakings aren't always a cinch. The spring launch, for
instance, was supposed to take place at the end of this month, but has been
postponed because the primary payload on the trip has been delayed. 

Although U.S.-based launch companies have begun to express interest, the
money is generally below their threshold. "But the Russians are very
interested in small projects," Twiggs said.

Gregory S. Williams
k4hsm at lock-net.com