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KSP Community CubeSat

K^2

By K^2
in Science & Spaceflight

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Ultimate Mission?  

104 members have voted

  1. 1. Ultimate Mission?

    • LEO Only - Keep it safe
      55
    • Sun-Earth L1
      5
    • Sun-Earth L2
      1
    • Venus Capture
      14
    • Mars Capture
      23
    • Phobos Mission
      99
    • Jupiter Moons Mission
      14
    • Saturn Moons Mission
      14
    • Interstellar Space
      53

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Nicholander

Nicholander

Posted
Posted
Maybe we should just do Moon gravity, and if we have enough funding follow it up with a Mars gravity "Kerbsat-2" or whatever?

We could do both in 1 CubeSat by having half of the petri dish be growing moss for about a week with Moon gravity, and then after half the missions life time, we change it to Mars gravity and make the other half of the petri dish grow moss for the rest of the mission's life time, so we can do both.

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MrZayas1

MrZayas1

Posted
Posted

I personally believe that if we are going to do something meaningful with a cubesat, we should send it to phobos, and land on it :P we would probably need a bigger budget, and even might have a sample analyzer on board like the one on the curiosity rover, but it sounds like it would be a groundbreaking feat for any community who is not "officially" part of space exploration don't you think? :) hope this happens tho phobos or not!

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henryrasia

henryrasia

Posted
Posted

Well, the first post was about making a community cubesat program. That is, we start small (still as big as we can) and work towards the "ultimate mission" (which is what the poll was for). So the ultimate mission will be the Phobos landing. Until then, however, we're starting with a LEO cubesat with an actual scientific experiment so we can make the most out of it AND maybe hitch a free ride from NASA, cutting ~$60k from the costs.

Clear now?

PS: K^2, please do update the first post with this information, maybe even delete the poll, or maybe start a new thread only for this first mission!

That'd clear up confusion.

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henryrasia

henryrasia

Posted
Posted (edited)

Using that spin calculator, NERVAfan, any small change in distance will dramatically change the gravity. How are we going to account for that if the top of the petri dish has a different gravity than the bottom? And more at the sides than the center? So a super thin, curved petri dish maybe?

EDIT: I guess what I'm saying is: 22 (following Akin's laws). When in doubt, document.

Edited by henryrasia
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NERVAfan

NERVAfan

Posted
Posted
Using that spin calculator, NERVAfan, any small change in distance will dramatically change the gravity. How are we going to account for that if the top of the petri dish has a different gravity than the bottom? And more at the sides than the center?

I don't think that will be too much of a problem. The top/bottom difference probably will be small since the moss will be, and the side-to-side thing is unavoidable with a cubical spacecraft, I think (and a fancy curved petri dish would mean we can't use existing ones). It'll still be a fairly decent simulation of Lunar gravity, I think.

We need an actual design, though. I think K^2 would be the one to know about the electric components etc. - we'd need to know what space is available for petri dish, microscope, camera etc.

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NERVAfan

NERVAfan

Posted
Posted

A few other thoughts...

I don't know how we are going to fit a microscope and camera into this. THere's an awesome looking Celestron mini-microscope with a built in camera (http://www.celestron.com/browse-shop/microscopes/digital-microscopes/mini-handheld-digital-microscope) but it's 89mm long... so that would be really squeezing to fit both it and the petri dish in, as the petri dish would be 5-10mm thick itself... I don't know if that would work. If we got an 8mm petri dish, that would leave 3mm for the thickness of both walls. Is that plausible?

One of the issues we had all been worried about was of the moss eating away the atmosphere and starving/poisoning itself to death. However, with the samples in question (they are quite small) with the volume that he showed me in the enclosed petri dishes (think maybe 1.5-2.0 times as long as a quarter and 5-10 mm thick)

I see mini-microscopes for iPhones; maybe someone electronics-competent (K^2?) could take the camera out of an iPhone and use that?

Additionally through the use of a mesh netting referred to as a phytoagar keeping the samples moist will likely not be a problem as well. The phytoagar allows the free flow of air, but effectively prevents the passage of moisture.

there may be some misunderstanding here. Phytoagar is a growth medium, not a mesh netting.

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KSat

KSat

Posted
Posted
A few other thoughts...

[...]

I see mini-microscopes for iPhones; maybe someone electronics-competent (K^2?) could take the camera out of an iPhone and use that?

Hello NERVAfan,

I would recommend, if you want to use a smartphone camera with extra lens as microscope (which is cool), that you do not take the camera out of the phone, but put the phone into the cubsat. Smartphones make good onboard computers, but use one that needs only small amount of power , so no iPhone i guess.

Cheers,

KSat

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Creature

Creature

Posted
Posted

there may be some misunderstanding here. Phytoagar is a growth medium, not a mesh netting.

It's a gel which is somewhat porous so in a sense it's a sort of a mesh by itself but yeah I think there's some misunderstanding because it doesn't exactly allow free passage of air. It does breathe a bit and certainly keeps moisture pretty well. But it's essentially like jello so imagine pouring some on a plate, then shaking, vibrating and blasting it off to space. It's probably gonna be a mess so you need some kind of supporting structure for it. Maybe take some thick nylon wire and build a framework on which you pour the agar and then clamp it tightly to the dish with a net on top. I don't think the moss needs a lot of space on the gel surface per sprout or whatever is the moss equivalent of a sprout?

Something I'm thinking is that if you completely seal off the dish with 1 atm inside it and then expose it to vacuum, can it handle the pressure difference?

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astropapi1

astropapi1

Posted
Posted

Okay, so I tried texturing the cubesat with three main textures:

-Solar panels

-Crumpled paper (looked like a nice passive thermal control system)

-Aluminum (for the truss)

Unfortunately, my laptop turns everything into awful low-res, so here's what it looks on a completely stock environment:

uQ4biCF.png

If one of you guys want, I can post the texture just to see what it looks in a computer with better graphics.

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henryrasia

henryrasia

Posted
Posted

Well, here's some resources I gathered:

NASA's cubesat launch initiative ("free launch" for educational purposes): http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/home/CubeSats_initiative.html

NASA's interplanetary cubesat challenge (3 million dollars prize for lunar orbit mission, guess what we're going for next!): http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/interplanetary-cubesat-challenge/

Project Calliope (extensively documented DIY cubesat project + resources to help people who want to do cubesats): http://projectcalliope.com/

This dude wrote 3 books on the subject,they seem very clear and conscise! "DIY Satellite Platforms" (
); "Surviving Orbit the DIY Way" (
); and "DIY Instruments for Amateur Space" (
)

Cubesat solar panels + magnetotorque (link for 1U): http://www.clyde-space.com/cubesat_shop/solar_panels/1u_solar_panels/53_1u-side-solar-panel-w-mtq

Arduino or Rasberry Pi? (cellphones are horrible for our purposes): http://readwrite.com/2014/05/07/arduino-vs-raspberry-pi-projects-diy-platform

General info on cubesats: http://makezine.com/2014/04/11/your-own-satellite-7-things-to-know-before-you-go/

Camera (GoPro alternative): http://replayxd.com/cameras/replay-xd1080-camera/

How to do microscope/HD camera double-purpose camera?

And for fun, Akin's laws: http://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html

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