Why phones? Jim Cockrell, project manager of PhoneSat, says that the idea started in the hallway conversations of some of his younger engineers.
"They'd say, 'I don't know why satellites have to be so expensive, and not very capable, when the smartphones in our pockets have 10 to 15 times more processing power,'" Cockrell tells PM. "So engineers started testing them to see what they could do, and soon the idea caught on and got funding."
The key to a smartphone's incredible processing capabilities, Cockrell says, is that the research and development process is night and day when compared to that of a satellite. "The thing about traditional satellites," he says, "is that there's a lot of stake?they're very expensive, and once they go up it's hard to repair them if something goes wrong." So every satellite, designed from scratch, goes through extensive tests and becomes expensive very quickly. "Engineers are reluctant to take a risk by putting in a technology that's not tried and true."
But where a satellite can cost several hundreds of millions of dollars, a cellphone costs just several hundred?and risks are easier for developers to stomach. "Vendors of smartphones are continuously improving them, and putting lots of money towards increasing their processing capabilities," Cockrell says. As a result, the average smartphone has much better microprocessing capabilities than a traditional satellite.
Plus, smartphones have the sensors that a satellite needs, including gyroscopes, accelerometers, and GPS receivers. They're also designed to be as durable and inexpensive as possible?attractive qualities in a satellite.
Once the project got the green light from NASA's Small Spacecraft Technology Program, Cockrell and his team faced a question that keeps many of us awake at night: iOS or Android?
Score one for Google.
"We came to the conclusion that iPhones make good phones," Cockrell says, "but Androids make good satellites." The ease of programming, he says, was the main draw. On an Android phone, it's easy to access raw data from the phone's sensor?exactly what his team needed to do.
There are three PhoneSats now in orbit: two of the initial model, which cost $3300 to build, and one $7000 PhoneSat 2 Beta that includes a solar charger and the ability to orient itself based on the earth's magnetic field. As this beginning stage of the mission, the three orbiters are just downloading their health and status data (voltage, temperature, and rates of tumble) and some photos of the Earth taken with modified cellphone cameras. "But the sky's the limit," Cockrell says. "We've proven that a smartphone can work in space, and we think you can do a lot with these small, inexpensive satellites that you can't do with a more traditional satellite."
One possible application is studying space weather?the effect of the heliosphere interacting with the upper atmosphere of the planet. With PhoneSats, scientists could take hundreds of measurements over a large geographic area simultaneously, allowing them to observe the phenomenon on a large scale. A traditional satellite could retrieve data from only one point at a time and would cost significantly more to build.
In addition, a PhoneSat is limited only by the imaginations of Android App developers around the world. For mission number one, Cockrell's team is running just a simple app that members designed in-house, he's excited for that to change.
"I can see us having a space app challenge," he says. "There are thousands of programmers who can write for Android. Maybe someone out there can make a killer satellite app that we haven't even envisioned yet. As far as we're concerned, this successful mission is just the beginning."
You can join in by listening for the PhoneSats' signals (every 30 seconds) on the amateur UHF band at 437.425 MHz and reporting what you hear at http://www.phonesat.org/
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