Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Space for all: Small, cheap satellites may one day do your bidding

This is how free enterprise works.  Great advancements come by accident.   "We had no idea CubeSats would go so far," Jordi Puig-Suari, an engineering professor at Cal Poly who is considered one of the inventors of the CubeSat concept, told NBC News.

AN FRANCISCO — Someday, swarms of satellites the size of a tissue box will be snapping pictures, taking environmental readings and broadcasting messages from orbit — but the entities controlling those satellites won't be governments.

Instead, they'll be hard-core hobbyists and elementary-school students, entrepreneurs and hacktivists. In short, anyone who can afford a few hundred dollars to send something to the final frontier.

The technology for this outer-space revolution already exists: It's a type of satellite known as a CubeSat, which measures just 4 inches (10 centimeters) on a side. The CubeSat phenomenon started out as an educational experiment, but now it's turning into a crowdsourcing, crowdfunding movement of Kickstarter proportions. And not even the sky is the limit.


READ MORE:  http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/space-all-small-cheap-satellites-may-one-day-do-your-6C10488674

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