Kentucky Space

KySat-1 orbital simulation

This simulation of KySat-1 in orbit shows the expected orientation and behavior in orbit. KySat-1 carries permanent magnets that track the Earth's Magnetic Field lines (just like a compass pointing north). In the video, you can see how it tumbles over its self (slowly) as it flies over the north pole.

"Passive Magnetic Stabilization" is sometimes referred to as Black Magic. While it's conceptually simple, choosing the strength of the magnets and the amount of damping material to include in the design is not trivial. Calculating the attitude behavior involved a significant amount of modeling of all the dynamics and environmental effects.

More detail on the "Orbital Environment Simulator", which is sort of a "general solution" capable of testing different satellite configurations in chosen orbits, will be presented at the 2009 Summer CubeSat Developers' Workshop next week.

Samir Rawashdeh
Kentucky Space Graduate Student

CubeSat, Kentucky Space, Space

Texas cubes deployed from Shuttle today

BEVO-1, one half of a pair of cubes from Texas universities aboard Endeavour, will be deployed at today at 7:33 AM CST. More information on it can be found here.

Wayne

CubeSat

Space and the Twitterverse

Short Sharp Science lists some ways space exploration and astronomy fans can use Twitter. Did you know you can use the service to tell you when the ISS is over your location?

Wayne

Kentucky Space

Picking out the Past

[Cross-posted from the IdeaFestival blog]

Having discarded a key idea about his work on Black Holes - that they can lock away the past forever - Stephen Hawking is hard at work on a theory about everything, or more precisely a theory about a theory about everything. Because one key lesson of quantum theory is that the constituents of reality have many possible futures, the latest issue of Discover says that Hawking

is now pushing a different strategy, which he calls top-down cosmology. It is not the case, he says, that the past uniquely determines the present. Because the universe has many histories and just as many possible beginnings, the present state of the universe selects the past. 'This means the the histories of the Universe depend on what is being measured,' Hawking wrote in a recent paper, 'contrary to the usual idea that the Universe has an objective, observer-independent history.'

I'm guessing that author and columnist for Astronomy magazine, Bob Berman, might have something to say about this at IdeaFestival 2009. You are coming aren't you?

Wayne

cosmology, Space

Carnival of Space 113

The very latest Carnival of Space has been posted at Dynamics of Cats.

Wayne

"Flying Laptop," a "radically reconfigurable" satellite to be tested

According to this Technology Review article, researchers in Germany have developed a "radically reconfigurable" satellite that can change missions on the fly.

The researchers, led by Toshinori Kuwahara of the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart, plan to launch a test satellite called Flying Laptop in 2012. The spacecraft's onboard computer will be able to reconfigure its own electronic hardware. The satellite will also carry a suite of instruments and sensors including cameras, multispectral imagers, thermal infrared imagers, and GPS receivers. The research appears in the spaceflight journal Acta Astronautica.

The technology could lead to the sharing or re-purposing of spacecraft. The abstract is here.

Reading the article, I immediately thought of the magnetic flux-pinned spacecraft - video of the technology here - that might test self assembly principles in space.

Wayne

CubeSat, Kentucky Space, Robotics, Space

Charles Bolden: Astronauts on Mars in his lifetime

In an AP story, new NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr. has been quoted as saying he'd be "incredibly disappointed" if astronauts aren't on Mars in his lifetime.

Wayne

"Anyone get the number of that truck"? Jupiter scarred by impact

Though speculated to be a small comet, an unknown object has left a huge mark at the southern pole of Jupiter, according to this New York Times report, leaving astronomers scrambling to get time on telescopes to study the evidence left behind. Estimates put the impact zone - the white spot at the bottom of this infrared image - at about the size of the Pacific Ocean.

Wayne

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Infrared Telescope Facility

What's it like to hitch a ride to space? Watch from aboard Falcon-1

Take a ride to space and enjoy the commentary as the world's first commercially developed rocket takes a Malaysian payload to space on July 13.

Wayne

Space

40 years ago today: Apollo 11 in images and video

There is a lot of Web activity today around the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Pictures taken by LRO of the lunar landers today can be found here (Apollo 11 is pictured above), and comprehensive video of the event itself, here. Read what Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation, has to say about the moon landing and the future of private space exploration at Space.com.

It's gratifying to know that Kentucky Space is playing a small part in the next generation of space exploration through its development of near space, sub-orbital and orbital science and technology programs.

Wayne

Images credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

Kentucky Space, Space