"Then a random cosmic ray happened." That's actually my first thought when I saw what those kicksats look like. At least wrap them in aluminium foil. The whole reason space tech not being the bleeding edge is because it needs, among other things, radiation hardening. Otherwise we could just send up a smartphone with a very expensive roaming data plan.
You can if you keep the antenna sticking out of the foil. Not that its a big deal, even cellphones get signals inside a aluminum box just fine. The technology we have today don't require a very strong signal to communicate
So, they can launch the *smallest* satellite with two cubesat with 100 sprites each, with the *smallest* rocket (on previous episode)? And by that, can they technically beat the previous world records?
"Fly by Alpha Centauri and get the data back ..." → The bigest chaleng migth be to get the data back. How would you make a microscopic satelite send the data back to earth ?
That's a good question. maybe on one of the pylons that hold the solar sail thing you could stick an antenna. although i don't think that would be good enough to send data to earth.
The starshot plan uses the light sail to take high power laser pulse from earth and reflect it back to recievers on earth, data can be sent by changing orientation of sail.
I understood its long range communication to be more like morris code with light, by selectively reflecting back the light to earth. Regardless, I think you are combining two stories into one. The solar sail idea and the sprite cluster idea are two separate ideas.
Even with a large radio dish you would need a gigantic amount of energy to send enough power to hope receiving any of it. We are not talking about a probe somewhere around Jupiter or Pluto ... we are talking interplanetary distances, over a thousand of time further then Voyager I & II (they are within a 24light-hour radius from earth ... Proxima Centauri is 4 light-years away) ... and dont forget that signal strengh decrases with the square of the distance !
Finn O'Sullivan Byrne a major update was coming soon. and it came. it just wasn't major, it was just language support. nobody cares about that, that's not a major update haven't played since.
When I tell my friends there are satellites as big as a cellphone, they look at me like I'm crazy. Next time I'll show them this vid. Tnx for uploading!
Reality check: hitting 4 grams (+sail) with Gigawatt lasers (sufficient to hit the sails with Megawatts of power) will effectively turn *anything* into plasma. Eventually you will need radiators made out of gold leaf that are larger than the huge sails, but still you have the problem that hitting relativistic speeds (before flying past Mars) requires megawatts of power per gram. Even if the sails/mirrors are 99.999% efficient, the thing is going to melt.
The laser sail mentioned near the end, wouldn't that overheat with such an amount of power focused on it? The only way the sail could lose heat is through black body radiation, that might be too slow.
If you want to be technical than the smallest satellite is probably a pebble just orbiting somewhere as a satellite is just an object orbiting another so the moon is technically a satellite I found that one interesting. Anyways nice video.
if they intercommunicate they can make a nerve tentacle ( or metastacize, depending on your pov) reaching further into time at higher speed than ever before . plus the string can be added to continually . maybe each could also speed the next along with a boost of stored energy.
Put the lasers in space to lessen the atmosphere scattering. Use the incoming laser to return information by changing its phase so it doesn't interfere with the lasers pushing it
this is interesting, lately ive been thinking it would be cool to have a bunch of tiny satellite, small and cheep enough for just about any one, to launch into space. ( Astronaut Farmer style).... particularly i think it would be cool to "shot gun blast" the moon, with a bunch of tiny satellites with cams, and map the moon, with more and more detail, as they get closer and closer to it, and transmitting the pictures, back to earth just right untill the impact...... this should give very good detail of the surface sense they will be getting soo close to it.
I haven't seen in the comment section but these things might survive reentry. Since their kinetic energy to surface ratio is lower than big satellites, they decelerate strongly. The reentry heat might not.be a problem in that case.
I would fear collisions when firing them at such a high velocity, but I suppose it probably only seems like a greater risk than it is, with how much space there is between stuff in space.
Well it was recently discovered that lasers can be combined using diamond allowing the use of multiple smaller lasers rather than one big one and reducing wast heat. So that's one technology that could be one step to the starshot.
What sort of orbits could you achieve if you launched one of these gram-sized satellites from a "cannon" in space? I.e. giving it some strong push without any active mechanics or thrusters on the satellite itself. Could you bring one to solar orbit with a cannon launch from the ISS? Also, how light could you make an attitude control system for these?
And after they get smaller and more capable, they'll learn to self-replicate and miniaturize further and further, until we get the "grey goo" scenario... ;)
a grey goo built of space debris and molecules of thermosphere I wonder if it starts raining or stays in orbit preventing us to break the barrier forever
Nano satellite's could have less mass and move faster, in theory some interesting things happen the faster a object move's through space and time, if a nano satellite of barely any mass, moved fast enough, things that small can move faster much easier and go to nearby suns much quicker. Hopefully the nano satellite's spiral, as they move through space, maybe it will somehow put energy into its system's, sort of energy transference, like and is convection and like a battery, their is life.
How much does it cost to launch 4 grams? I would do a mini constellation of tiny SATs with a Lepton sensor and some gyros to image our inner planets or look for Quasars redshifted into LWIR. The Mayak sounds interesting and But we need help to get the correct orbital data and more pictures on heavens-above! Could you share you thoughts on the project?
Try to launch one of those tiny satellites in realistic earth in KSP! Thus, you can make the smallest rocket. I'd recommend you to launch the rocked in Peru or Bolivia, because they are closer to the equator.
Hey, Scott. I was wondering if there are designated orbital "lanes" to keep things somewhat orderly or if it's a free-for-all matter of launching your craft and keeping an eye on it to avoid potential collisions.
This is good stuff and has great potential but also demonstrates, at least in my opinion, the currently largest technical hurdle for these nano satellites and that is radiation hardening. LEO is a relatively tame radiation environment because of earths magnetic field, and one of the cubesats mentioned in the video still had a problem due to radiation. I have also seen videos on people putting cell phone hardware into cubesats as a cheap and high power processing unit, and it is that. The reliability of the cubesat will not be very good though because phones are note designed for a space radiation environment. Hopefully, we also figure out the reliability issues through either radiation hardening and better error algorithms. Maybe self healing circuits.
The problem with those satellites is that they are made of commercial grade components which may work in the harsh space environment for couple of days if not hours before they fail.
You know, with this and the small boosters you recently discussed on a previous video, why doesn't someone make a mass media (usb, cd-rom,) type of payload and make it sub orbital, and safely enter the atmosphere over N. Korea and safely separate high in the atmosphere? I wonder if the costs (and crowd funding efforts) could make such a thing possible.
the light/solar sale satellite animation, seams to show the satellite 90 degrees off from what it should be. the animation shows it flying through space like a shurikin , rather then a sail.
Ive always wanted nasa to launch a bunch of these small cameras like this to other planets and shower them all over. just give us eyes to see the vistas.We can learn so much from visual images if they done it cheap enough to cover large area.
They could maybe work with the Military a bit, to fund that Starshot array. They're into lasers right? Perhaps the Starshot array could help with Defense or serve some additional purposes in general. Lasers that precise and powerful ought to be able to take down some missiles at least, I would think?
I met Zachary Manchester at NASA Ames in 2013 (+ or - a year) during a tour for my high school engineering camp. He said he had trouble convincing NATO to let him release his satellites because they weren't traceable on their scanners and they didn't want their $300 million satellites to get peppered by, what he dubbed, "Crap Sats". Pretty funny anecdote and a very interesting dude.
Why not launch a falcon heavy or something with a few extra (small) stages ending at a microsatelite? Well, add a few extra mircrosatelites to detatch early and act as relays, powering them in the middle of nowhere would be kind of hard, though.
Nothing new should be added to Earth orbit that doesn't contain a "self-destruct" de-orbit mechanism. The last thing we need up there is tons of new debris. These sprites could have little CO2 cartridges, for example. Non-proprietary tracking would probably be a good idea too (any old sat is every new sat's concern).
Stuff in low orbit has a short lifespan before drag brings it down. No worries, unless they start launching them into higher orbits. A thruster and sufficient fuel would add significant weight. I would say, use Earth's magnetic field instead. (Tiny solar powered magnet on board.)
Interesting question to consider with something this small is how much of a navigational hazard will they become? Granted the launch/deployment area is known but they will drift over time. It doesn't seem like the orbits will decay that fast so will you end up with a cloud that will show up on the navigation sensors or is the relative velocity low enough to make safety for other satellites a relative non issue?
Man im seeing this question, or ones like it, all over the place. Apparently Scott wasn't clear enough in his explanation, shame on you Scott. They are being deployed in lower orbits which cause them to burn up in the atmosphere shortly (months) after deployment, that's why the second one sent up failed. The timer that was meant to deploy them when they were far enough away for other orbits to be safe, failed, and the whole thing burned up without ever releasing its payload. From Scotts explanation I gathered these are just tests, they just want to see if its even possible to have a viable micro-satellite, I doubt their going to be putting huge clouds of these in Earth orbit. These would probably be more effective as an alternative to the huge probes we use to explore our solar system and possibly others. Being so small it wouldn't cost as much getting them up there, we could send multiples of them in different directions at once, and each one probably costs less in general than a conventional probe/satellite.
At one point during your explanation of all the calamities that befell these things, I was expecting you to say that the next tiny satellite "burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp".
Given the proposed power output and beam focusing abilities, the starshot laser is pretty much the deathstar already. It wouldn't be planet-explodingly powerful, but it would be powerful enough to destroy practically any manmade object in the solar system. Any sufficiently powerful propulsion system is indistinguishable from a really, really big gun.
I hate to put some brakes on the hype train but Project West Ford (1961 US) probably beats you at the smallest artificial designed satellite (as opposed to orbiting protons left by second stage burns/ general space junk), the mass of each satellite was 39.5ng. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford The project itself is a pretty interesting story, basically, the US military tried to create an artificial ionosphere (the part of the atmosphere that you can bounce radio waves off of for over the horizon radio communication) by putting 1.78cm dipole antenna into orbit. In short, everything failed (surprise surprise).
i'm actually really worried about this from the perspective of space junk, i mean the smaller they are the less chance to hit them, but remember what a little dust speck did to the window at the ISS considering how much force these little buggers could have if they broke in some way, well it's a lil terrifying to say the least.
Plus there are already millions of small objects in space and satellites are build quite tough. They basically put two of each system in there in case one of them fails.
Not hugely, we can easily determine their position and speed, because they have built in sensors. Even if they fail they will inevitably will deorbit soon after.
What sort of controls have been placed on launching these micro sats aside from avoiding the path of the space station? The number and diminutive size of these sounds like it risks Kessler Syndrome.
chips are able to continue functioning after 30000 g's? theres a sail that wont be melted by those lasers? if we eliminate atmospheric disturbances by putting 100 m^2 of lasers on mars or the moon or some u2s and fire the lasers for 1000 min, seems like that would be more likely not to explode.
Thats neat but what is the equivalent of a cellphone mainboard useful for in Orbit? I guess you can use them for magnetic measurements or as a (extremly low power) transmitter, but I dont see any point for them
Hi Scott would you be able to update Femotosatellite topic in relation to Cygnus Satellite re-entry news from NASA Johnson's latest Space to Ground news video. Had to come here to find out what they were, thanks for the informative as always video.
"Let's make stuff in space as small as possible so we will never find them again!" - Engineers 20 years before all launch windows are blocked by space debris
Are there problems with thermal management (I assume not, since surface area would increase), with power density, or with the relatively higher atmospheric-drag-to-momentum ratio deorbiting them faster? (I know the electrodynamic tether was suggested by some people in Michigan to counteract the problem of high drag on chipsats.)
How would a 5 gram device be able to transmit a signal 5+ light years?, no amount of miniaturisation or future advancements will be able to overcome the need for what I would think would be a very narrow multi mega watt beam aimed directly back to Earth. The only way I could see this working is if you sent up thousands in weekly or intervals and inline where they would each act as relay stations. Come to think of it, you would probably need millions.
You called them satellites when describing Breakthrough Starshot - wouldn't they be space ships / star ships / probes, since not specifically orbiting anything? (Also what does a starshot probe look like entering an atmosphere at 0,8C?)
pumpkineater23 In theory, yes, but... The distance travelled would be insignificant as the balloon only goes about 20-30 miles up. Try finding enough helium (or hydrogen RIP) to make a balloon that lifts a whole launch stage. The rocket would have to be on top of the balloon, so it would be very top heavy. Single use launch system. plane assisted launches also work off the same idea, but they work better because they add some velocity to the rocket.
energy required to get orbital velocity is orders of magnitude greater than energy required to reach proper altitude and 30 km doesn't save you a lot of the total 350 (ISS) so basically a same weight rocket but on ireland sized balloon (yes I edited because I mistaked the first try)
Thanks so much for the replies. I read that high altitude balloons can reach heights of over 50km. Since it's only 100km to space (?) this would half the distance. I was thinking a small rocket could then blast off, from 50km, and deliver a cluster of small satellites such as those mentioned in this video at relatively low cost. Do you think the rocket would still need to be huge in order to carry enough fuel to make this possible?
no big deal, all we need to make is a nico-dyson beam, just surround our star with a dyson swarm, and get all the suns energy by surrounding it by solar panels (basically) then gather all the energy and send it off in a massive beam.
