DailyDirt: DIY Space Satellites

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's getting easier and easier to send stuff into low earth orbit, and more folks seem to be interested in doing it. So not surprisingly, there is a growing number of projects that offer to perform amateur experiments on small satellites. For students, the opportunity to send up experiments into space has been around for at least a couple years (via the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program), but now almost anyone can participate in a space experiment. Here are just a few examples. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: arduino, ardusat, diy, low earth orbit, pongsat, satellites, skycube, space
Companies: kickstarter


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2012 @ 5:39pm

    We need DIY spaceships. Just make 'em out of cardboard, what could go wrong?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2012 @ 5:49pm

    Re:

    as long as those cardboard spaceships don't need to survive re-entry... let's do it. (also assuming these are unmanned and small model-sized ships)

    probably need something bigger than a c model rocket engine......

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Nash, 2 Aug 2012 @ 6:06pm

    Was curious . . .

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2012 @ 6:32pm

    I'm pretty sure I broadcast messages from space all the time!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2012 @ 9:58pm

    The Pirate Bay space station isn't looking far off now, is it?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2012 @ 7:15am

    Re:

    A baystation?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 3 Aug 2012 @ 7:40pm

    Space satellites. As opposed to what, Georgia Satellites?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    John Powell, 8 Apr 2014 @ 2:51pm

    PongSats!

    JP Aerospace is still at it, flying ping pong balls to the edge of space.
    We've flown an awful lot of them since this article. We've now flown just over 14,000.
    I believe that's more education payloads than all the rest of the world's space programs combined.

    We are doing it again, twice as big, this September 2000 PongSats are going up.

    Once again we are using crowd source funding to keep it free for the students.
    Here's a link to our kickstarter page:

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1569698176/2000-student-projects-to-the-edge-of-space

    John

    John Powell
    JP Aerospace, America's OTHER Space Program
    www.jpaerospace.com

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.