3D Printed Lithographic Moon Lamp

December 8, 2021 by Orlando Hoilett 16 Comments

After years of being a software developer, [Chris] was excited to get back into embedded development and we’re glad he did. His 3D printed lithographic moon lamp combines a number of hacker and maker skills, and is sure to impress.

3D-printed lithographic moons have gotten pretty popular these days, so he was able to find a suitable model on Thingiverse to start with. Gotta love open-source. Of course, he needed to make a few modifications to fit his end design. Namely, he put a hole at the bottom of the moon, so he could slide the LED and heatsink inside. The 3 watt LED is pretty beefy, so he definitely needed a heat sink to make sure everything stayed cool.

Otherwise, the circuit itself is pretty straightforward. He has an ESP32 to drive the RGB LED through a transistor, and fitted the components onto a custom-designed circuit board to ensure everything stayed neat and organized. You don’t want a ton of loose wires and breadboards cluttering this build. Since he used an ESP32, he was able to create a simple web interface to control the color of the LEDs. Gotta make it connected somehow, right?

What’s great is in addition to the project write-up, [Chris] includes video tutorials, walking the readers through each individual step of the build. By doing so he really makes it easy for readers to follow along and reuse his work. If you’re still looking for ideas, one of these could make a really good Christmas present.

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Spacing Out: Telescopes, Politics, And Spacecraft Design

December 7, 2021 by Jenny List 9 Comments

Let’s launch into a round-up of stories that are out of this world, as we take a look at what’s happening in the realm of space exploration.

Ten Billion Dollars For A Telescope? Don’t Drop It!

Perhaps the most highly anticipated space mission of the moment is the James Webb Space Telescope, an infra-red telescope that will be placed in an orbit around the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point from which it will serve as the successor to the now long-in-the-tooth Hubble telescope. After many years of development the craft has been assembled and shipped to French Guiana for a scheduled Ariane 5 launch on the 22nd of December. We can only imagine what must have gone through the minds of the engineers and technicians working on the telescope when an unplanned release of a clamp band securing it to the launch vehicle adapter sent a vibration throughout the craft. Given the fragility of some of its components this could have jeopardised the mission, however after inspection it was found that no damage had occurred and that space-watchers and astronomers alike can breathe easy.

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Two Mars Orbiters Chatted For Atmospheric Science

December 2, 2021 by Roger Cheng 9 Comments

Mission extensions for interplanetary robot explorers are usually continuations of their primary mission. But sometimes the hardware already on board are put to novel uses. European Space Agency has started using radio equipment on board two Mars orbiters to probe the Martian atmosphere.

The scientific basis is straightforward: radio signals are affected by whatever they had traveled through. When transmitting data, such effects are noises to be minimized. But we can also leverage it for atmospheric science here on Earth. ESA applied the same concept at Mars: by transmitting a known signal from one Mars orbiter to another, changes in the received signal tells scientists something about the Martian atmosphere between them.

So the theory sounds good, but the engineering implementation took some work. Most radio equipment on board ESA’s orbiters were not designed to talk to each other. In fact they were deliberately different to minimize interference. However, both Mars Express and Trace Gas Orbiter were designed to act as data relays for surface probes, and not just the one they each carried to Mars. Thus their related radio gear were flexible enough to be adapted to this experiment.

These two machines launched over a decade apart. Yet they could now communicate with each other in Mars orbit using radios originally designed for talking to the surface. In the near future such chatter will probably be limited, as Trace Gas Orbiter is still in the middle of its primary mission. But this success lets ESA think about how much further to push the idea in the future. In the meantime Mars Express will continue its observation of Mars, doing things like giving us context on Perseverance rover landing.

Christian Hahn Starlink capture showing guard region.

Analyzing Starlink Satellite Downlink Communications With Software Defined Radio

November 26, 2021 by Maya Posch 23 Comments

Often, mere curiosity is sufficient to do something. This is also the case with people trying to analyze the communication setup and protocol which SpaceX is using with their Ku-band based Starlink satellites. One of these fine folk is [Christian Hahn], who has recently posted some early findings to r/StarlinkEngineering over at Reddit. Some of the captured data seems to include the satellite ID system that ground-based user stations would presumably use to keep track of overhead Starlink satellites.

For the capturing itself, [Christian] is using a second-hand dish for capture and a DIY SDR using KC705 FPGA-based hardware – which may have begun its life as crypto mining hardware – along with the usual assortment of filters and other common components with this kind of capture. Even at this early time, some features of the Starlink protocol seem quite obvious, such as the division into channels and the use of guard periods. Nothing too earth-shattering, but as a fun SDR hobby it definitely checks all the boxes.

[Christian] has also announced that at some point he’ll set up a website and publish the findings and code that should make Starlink signal analysis easy for anyone with a readily available SDR receiver.

Find Your Way In The Starry Skies With DobsonianDSC

November 25, 2021 by Maya Posch 13 Comments

An obvious problem with the use of a telescope is getting the former to point at the proper part of the sky which you intend to observe, or vice versa when you spot something interesting and wish to record the exact location. While all of this can be done manually with some trouble, there’s a lot to be said for automating this process. Unfortunately these Digital Setting Circles (DSC) features are not cheap even as add-on, which is why [Vladimir Atehortúa] created DobsonianDSC as a low-cost DIY solution.

As the name suggests, this project is based around a Dobsonian-style telescope: Newtonian tube with simple altazimuth base. Aside from the mechanical construction, this system uses an ESP32 as its controller along with two rotary encoders, with the simple circuit detailed in a build guide. The firmware for the ESP32 is written in the Arduino C dialect, and a guide for flashing the ESP32 with the Arduino IDE and connecting it to the WLAN is provided as well.

After setup, the resulting telescope system can be used either via WiFi or Bluetooth from existing apps such as SkySafari that support the ‘Basic Encoding System’. An initial calibration is required, but after that you should have a telescope that works in concert with SkySafari or similar to automate this tedious part of astronomy away.

Obviously this is not a ready-to-install system, as every telescope is shaped and sized differently, but inspiration for mounting solutions is provided as well.

Blue Origin Rolls Out Test Article For Next-Gen Rocket

November 22, 2021 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

By any metric you care to use, this is a very exciting time for America’s space program. NASA is refocusing their efforts towards the Moon and beyond, SpaceX is launching routine crew and cargo flights to the International Space Station with reusable rockets, and if you’ve got deep enough pockets, there are now multiple companies offering suborbital pleasure trips requiring little more than a few hours worth of training. It’s taken longer than many people had hoped, but it seems we’re finally making the confident strides necessary to truly utilize space’s vast resources.

But things are just getting started. A new generation of massive reusable rockets are currently being developed, which promise to make access to space cheaper and faster than ever before. We’ve seen quite a bit of SpaceX’s Starship, thanks in no small part to the dramatic test flights that the media-savvy company has been regularly live streaming to YouTube. But Blue Origin, founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has been far more secretive about their New Glenn. That is, until now.

On November 8th, Blue Origin rolled out their GS1 simulator for the New Glenn’s first stage. This stand-in for the real rocket will never fly, but it’s designed to perfectly recreate the dimensions, center of gravity, and mass, of the real thing. Ground teams will use the GS1 to practice safely transporting the booster, which is approximately half the length of the Saturn V, from their production facility to Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) at Cape Canaveral. It will also be used to test the fit and function of various pieces of ground support equipment, and eventually, the second stage stacking procedure.

For the uninitiated, it might seem like this is a lot of fuss over what’s ultimately just a hollow metal tube. But the introduction of a test article such as this has traditionally been a major milestone during the design and construction of rockets and spacecraft, dating back to the “boilerplate” test capsules used during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs; a sure sign that what was just an idea is now becoming a reality.

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There Were Almost Jet Packs On The Moon

November 18, 2021 by Al Williams 21 Comments

Here it is almost 2022 and we still don’t have our jet packs. But don’t feel bad. NASA astronauts wanted a lunar jetpack, but they didn’t get one either. [Amy] at The Vintage Space has an interesting video about what almost was, and you can see it below.

Of course, a jet pack on the moon would be easier than an Earthbound one. The goal was to allow the crew to range further from their lander since they couldn’t carry very much and the lander didn’t have a lot of consumables, either. In addition, if you lost sight of the lander, getting back could be a problem since navigating on the moon was an unknown skill.

In 1969 awarded exploratory contracts for lunar personal flying vehicles including one to Bell who had their Earth-bound jet pack that shows up every so often for example in Bond movies.

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