Satellite's gone up to the skies

November 12, 2012 9:01 PM

The kickstarter satellites. Sandy Antunes, the author of the blog post has built his own picosatellite Project Calliope. A project he also chronicled in his blog Satelite Diaries. NPR story.

Sandy Antunes has also written a book, DIY Satellite Platforms. Via Cool Tools.

posted by shothotbot (7 comments total)

Sandy "RPG.net" Antunes? Cool!
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:06 PM on November 12, 2012

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.
posted by clarknova at 10:08 PM on November 12, 2012

Things like this drive me out of my mind.
posted by hippybear at 10:18 PM on November 12, 2012 [2 favorites]

Yes, we need more space debris.
posted by percor at 4:42 AM on November 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

That said, given the height that those cameras on balloons get, could you build a 2 stage balloon + rocket to get you to a stable orbit? I suspect not, otherwise it would have been done already.
posted by percor at 4:46 AM on November 13, 2012

These ultra-LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites barely qualify as debris. The orbit probably decays on the order of months.

After a bunch of searching, I found this on his site: I'm doing music from space, using a 200 gram instrument in a half-kilogram case launched 312 kilometers up. What 200 grams would you put into orbit?

A little more googling turned up this paper on an orbital decay rate simulator which happens to have a sample run for a 300km orbit on page 5. Decays after 46 days.
posted by DU at 5:22 AM on November 13, 2012

Does fluoride fight orbital decay?
posted by Goofyy at 6:17 AM on November 13, 2012