Libre Space Foundation Aims To Improve Satellite Tech

October 22, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 27 Comments

There’s no shortage of movies, TV shows, and books that show a dystopian future with corporations run amok in outer space with little or no effective oversight. Dune, The Expanse, and The Dispossessed spring to mind as predicting different aspects of this idea, but there are plenty of other warnings throughout sci-fi depicting this potential future. One possible way of preventing this outcome is by ensuring that space is as open-sourced as possible and one group, the Libre Space Foundation (LSF), is working towards this end. Their latest is a project with Ondsel to develop and model a satellite deploying mechanism using almost entirely open source software.

The LSF had already designed the PICOBUS satellite launcher system that flew to space in 2022 and deployed a number of CubeSats, but the group needed more information about how the system would perform. They turned to Ondsel to help develop a multi-body dynamics (MBD) solver, managing simulations with mass-spring-damper models. The satellite launcher includes a large constant-force spring that pushes the CubeSats out of the device once the door is opened, and the model can now simulate their paths in space without gravity. The team will launch their next set of satellites sometime next year on an RFA-ONE rocket.

The LSF maintains a huge database of their open source space projects, including this one, on their GitLab page. Although it might seem like small potatoes now, the adoption of open source software and hardware by space-fairing entities can help further the democratization of low Earth orbit.

Thanks to [johnad] for the tip!

Hackaday Links: September 3, 2023

September 3, 2023 by Dan Maloney 16 Comments

Right-to-repair has been a hot-button topic lately, with everyone from consumers to farmers pretty much united behind the idea that owning an item should come with a plausible path to getting it fixed if it breaks, or more specifically, that you shouldn’t be subject to prosecution for trying to repair your widget. Not everyone likes right-to-repair, of course — plenty of big corporations want to keep you from getting up close and personal with their intellectual property. Strangely enough, their ranks are now apparently joined by the Church of Scientology, who through a media outfit in charge of the accumulated works of Church founder L. Ron Hubbard are arguing against exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that make self-repair possible for certain classes of devices. They apparently want the exemption amended to not allow self-repair of any “software-powered devices that can only be purchased by someone with particular qualifications or training or that use software ‘governed by a license agreement negotiated and executed’ before purchase.

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Discussing The Finer Points Of Space-Worthy Software

July 17, 2023 by Tom Nardi 28 Comments

At the dawn of the Space Race, when computers were something that took up whole rooms, satellites and probes had to rely on analog electronics to read from their various sensors and transmit the resulting data to the ground. But it wasn’t long before humanity’s space ambitions outgrew these early systems, which lead to vast advancements in space-bound digital computers in support of NASA’s Gemini and Apollo programs. Today, building a spacecraft without an onboard computer (or even multiple redundant computers) is unheard of. Even the smallest of CubeSats is likely running Linux on a multi-core system.

As such, software development has now become part an integral part of spacecraft design — from low-level code that’s responsible for firing off emergency systems to the 3D graphical touchscreen interfaces used by the crew to navigate the craft. But as you might expect, the stakes here are higher than any normal programming assignment. If your code locks up here on Earth, it’s an annoyance. If it locks up on a lunar lander seconds before it touches down on the surface, it could be the end of the mission.

To get a bit more insight into this fascinating corner of software development, we invited Jacob Killelea to host last week’s
Software for Satellites Hack Chat. Jacob is an engineer with a background in both aero and thermodynamics, control systems, and life support. He’s written code for spacecraft destined for the Moon, and perhaps most importantly, is an avid reader of Hackaday.

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Democratizing Space, One Picosatellite At A Time

June 28, 2023 by Tom Nardi 50 Comments

There was a time when putting an object into low Earth orbit was the absolute pinnacle of human achievement. It was such an outrageously expensive and complex undertaking that only a world superpower was capable of it, and even then, success wasn’t guaranteed. As the unforgiving physics involved are a constant, and the number of entities that could build space-capable vehicles remained low, this situation remained largely the same for the remainder of the 20th century.

But over the last couple of decades, the needle has finally started to move. Of course spaceflight is still just as unforgiving today as it was when Sputnik first streaked through the sky in 1957, but the vast technical improvements that have been made since then means space is increasingly becoming a public resource.

Thanks to increased commercial competition, putting a payload into orbit now costs a fraction of what it did even ten years ago, while at the same time, the general miniaturization of electronic components has dramatically changed what can be accomplished in even a meager amount of mass. The end result are launches that don’t just carry one or two large satellites into orbit, but dozens of small ones simultaneously.

To find out more about this brave new world of space exploration, we invited Nathaniel Evry, Chief Research Officer at Quub, to host last week’s DIY Picosatellites Hack Chat.

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One Method For Removing Future Space Junk

March 22, 2023 by Bryan Cockfield 18 Comments

When sending satellites into space, the idea is to place them into as stable an orbit as possible in order to maximize both the time the satellite is useful and the economics of sending it there in the first place. This tends to become rather untenable as the amount of space junk continues to pile up for all but the lowest of orbits, but a team at Brown University recently tested a satellite that might help solve this problem, at least for future satellite deployments.

The main test of this satellite was its drag sail, which increases its atmospheric drag significantly and reduces its spaceflight time to around five years. This might make it seem like a problem from an economics standpoint, as it’s quite expensive to build satellites and launch them into space, but this satellite solves these problems by being both extremely small to minimize launch costs, and also by being built out of off-the-shelf components not typically rated for spaceflight. For example, it gets its power solely from AA batteries and uses an Arduino for its operation and other research.

The satellite is currently in orbit, and has already descended from an altitude of 520 km to 470 km. While it won’t help reduce the existing amount of debris in orbit, the research team hopes to demonstrate that small satellites can be affordable and economically feasible without further contributing to the growing problem of space junk. If you’re looking to launch your own CubeSat one day, take a look at this primer which goes over most of the basics.

Hackaday Links: January 8, 2023

January 8, 2023 by Dan Maloney 12 Comments

Something odd is afoot in the mountains around Salt Lake City, Utah, at least according to local media reports of remote radio installations that have been popping up for at least the past year. The installations consist of a large-ish solar panel, a weatherproof box full of batteries — and presumably other electronics, including radios — and a mast bearing at least one antenna. Local officials aren’t quite sure who these remote setups belong to or what they’re intended to do, but the installations obviously represent a huge investment in resources.

The one featured in the story was located near the summit of Twin Peaks, which is about 11,000 feet (3,300 meters) in elevation, which with that much gear was probably a hell of a hike. Plus, the owner took great pains to make sure the site would withstand the weather, with antenna mast guy wires that must have required lugging a pretty big drill up with them. There aren’t any photos of the radios in the enclosure, but one photo shows a 900-MHz LORA antenna, while another shows what appears to be a panel antenna, perhaps pointing toward another site. So maybe a LORA mesh network? Some comments in the Twitter thread show most people are convinced this is a Helium crypto mining rig, but the Helium Explorer doesn’t show any hotspots listed in that area. Either way, the owners are out of luck, since their gear is being removed if it’s on public land.

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CAPSTONE: The Story So Far

September 22, 2022 by Tom Nardi 30 Comments

After decades of delays and false starts, NASA is finally returning to the Moon. The world is eagerly awaiting the launch of Artemis I, the first demonstration flight of both the Space Launch System and Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which combined will send humans out of low Earth orbit for the first time since 1972. But it’s delayed.

While the first official Artemis mission is naturally getting all the attention, the space agency plans to do more than put a new set of boots on the surface — their long-term goals include the “Lunar Gateway” space station that will be the rallying point for the sustained exploration of our nearest celestial neighbor.

But before launching humanity’s first deep-space station, NASA wants to make sure that the unique near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) it will operate in is as stable as computer modeling has predicted. Enter the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE.

CAPSTONE in the clean room prior to launch.

Launched aboard an Electron rocket in June, the large CubeSat will hopefully become the first spacecraft to ever enter into a NRHO. By positioning itself in such a way that the gravity from Earth and the Moon influence it equally, maintaining its orbit should require only periodic position corrections. This would not only lower the maintenance burden of adjusting the Lunar Gateway’s orbit, but reduce the station’s propellant requirement.

CAPSTONE is also set to test out an experimental navigation system that uses the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as a reference point instead of ground-based stations. In a future where spacecraft are regularly buzzing around the Moon, it will be important to establish a navigation system that doesn’t rely on Earthly input to operate.

So despite costing a relatively meager $30 million and only being about as large as a microwave oven, CAPSTONE is a very important mission for NASA’s grand lunar aspirations. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone quite to plan so far. Trouble started just days after liftoff, and as of this writing, the outcome of the mission is still very much in jeopardy.

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