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 |  | 'Beanie Baby' Satellites to Ride Russian Rockets
By Robert Myers
Multimedia Producer
posted: 09:23 am ET
16 November 2000
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One Stop Satellite Solutions (OSSS) is hoping to do for space access what Henry Ford did for the automobile -- make it cheap enough for average folks.
Combining a 4-inch (10-centimeter) "CubeSat" developed by the University of Stanford, and a horde of demilitarized Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launchers, OSSS can launch your 2.2-pound (1-kilogram) payload for about $45,000. Launching a more traditional satellite can cost from $3 million to $5 million for the same weight.
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Four-inch CubeSats could carry everything from science experiments to radio transmitters to orbit, relatively cheaply. |
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| A Stanford cubesat launcher will propel the miniature spacecraft out of their launcher on a spring.
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| A modified Russian missile, now known as Dnepr, launches from a silo at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
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Of course, you can't exactly bundle yourself into a CubeSat. But scientists, small businesses and creative, well-heeled individuals could loft just about anything they can think of. Considering that a Palm III weighs in at 6.8 ounces (193 grams), a lot of computing power could be fit into that small space.
"You might call this a 'Beanie Baby satellite,'" said Robert Twiggs, a Stanford University professor and CubeSat's inventor, since the satellite is about the size of a Beanie Baby box.
Anything larger, "even the size of a lady's hatbox," would have driven costs back into the stratosphere, Twiggs said.
He developed the satellites so that graduate students and universities could launch small experiments more frequently. Commercial applications became apparent later. But the package didn't come together until they met with Kosmotras, the Russian firm putting Cold War-era ICBMs to commercial use. As part of a nuclear disarmament agreement, former Soviet SS-18 ICBMs, now called Dneprs, are slated to either be used for commercial purposes, or destroyed outright by December 31, 2007.
Twiggs has no end of ideas for ways his cheap and tiny satellites can be used -- from secure storage of sensitive computer records that could also be accessed by radio anytime the satellite was in view, to creating a personal "Sputnik" broadcasting your message around the world. Some ham radio operators are already on board to launch into orbit "repeaters," to bounce their radio signals around the globe. A constellation of the tiny craft could scatter small instruments over large areas in orbit for broad views.
"Or they could work as an absentee-vote ballot collector," added Twiggs wryly.
To avoid adding to the space junk problem though, the CubeSats would have a short life span: lasting from six months to a year.
"You know with college students, we can't keep their attention longer than six months," joked Twiggs. To make sure the CubeSats don't stay up indefinitely, they would normally only be launched up to about 125 miles (200 kilometers).
But if they're launched to a higher orbit, boosting a small payload to the Moon or even Mars is relatively easy, Twiggs said.
"If you want to put something around Mars, this can do it affordably," he added.
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