NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-satellites

Re:NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-sat... by adestefan on Friday April 26, 2013 @11:15AM (#5613344)

The only part that's really being used in the CPU, memory, and sensors. New batteries are installed and new radios and antennas are used bypassing all the on-phone radio equipment. This really is nothing more than a way to hype up a not so useful project. There are dozen of short to medium life cubesats that are launched every year with off the shelf components.

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Re:NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-sat... by mturmon on Friday April 26, 2013 @11:38AM (#5613494)

You have a point about the phone being kind of a red herring. Here's a link to the larger CubeSat program:

http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/home/CubeSats_initiativ...

There is significant interest in these small units (10cm on a side, but combinable up to 6 units) on the part of universities. Here's a list of the upcoming launches:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-073

I think that within NASA CubeSats are regarded with limited interest. The conventional route for a new satellite measurement from the lab to space is via airborne, or in some cases balloon-borne, experiments. That's how, say, new radar, lidar, hyperspectral imaging, etc., technologies are proven. Lab bench, field experiments, airplane, space.

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Re:NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-sat... by adestefan on Friday April 26, 2013 @11:48AM (#5613557)

The CubeSat program is awesome for universities. There are also lots of launch opportunities from the Chinese, Indians, and Russians. Just yesterday there were a couple university sponsored CubeSats that where launched on a Chinese rocket.

http://amsat-uk.org/2013/04/26/ham-radio-cubesats-successful...

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Re:NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-sat... by mturmon on Friday April 26, 2013 @01:28PM (#5614171)

I neglected the international angle. Thanks for that.

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Re:NASA has three smartphones orbiting the earth as mini-sat... by spiritplumber on Friday April 26, 2013 @09:29PM (#5616430)

The camera is also being used (OK that's technically a sensor...)

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