Do you want to become the operator of the satellite?
If you have had your companion, what would you experiments conducted on it? Next week you will have (well, almost appear) can. Now the ISS flies the world's first opensource-satellite, which will be able to work with many willing and it does not need to have a budget of millions of dollars. Devices ArduSat-1 and ArduSat-X were sent to the ISS on August 3 board a Japanese space truck HTV-4 . These devices are also known as CubeSat'y &. They are a mini-satellite, equipped with a variety of equipment - cameras, spectrometers, Geiger and others, but it is in itself a satellite of only 10 cm in diameter.
Japanese space truck tomorrow should dock with the ISS and mini-satellites will be unloaded at the station , and then use the robotic arm manipulator sent into space. That is his own rocket into space for the conclusion they do not need. This organization of the launch, as the developers say, the most favorable to micro-satellites. "Nobody ever gave ordinary people access to the satellites. We intend to do this by ArduSat", - said Chris Wake of the company NanoSatisfi, where the machines were built.
launch vehicles has been partially funded through Kickstarter-campaign, where a number of investors have already taken some time windows of the satellites in order to conduct experiments. If the devices will work long and all of the reserved time slots will be worked out, then everyone can pay $ 125 for 3 days and get control of one unit. Week will cost $ 250.
All open satellites operate on the basis of the operating platform Arduino. It is open and any programmer can write a program for it to work on the satellite. Already there are programs for 3D-modeling of the Earth magnetosfery for research on water resources and other tasks such as tracking meteorites. Authors of the project say that the satellites have to work about 7 months, after which they will enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up in it. "In three to five years, we intend to bring thousands of these devices and make them accessible to students," - says Wake.
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