Version 1 of the cubesat
Have you ever dreamed of launching your own satellite into space? We did!
With all the publicity about SpaceX, RocketLabs, and Virgin Orbit we couldn’t help but wonder if this was possible. Well, turns out it is.
So, we set out to see what it would cost to get a ride up to earth’s orbit.
After some research, we found that the launch costs currently stand at around $40K but forecast to keep trending down to half that by 2021. Seems reasonable.
Now, how much for a satellite?
It seems those are getting way cheaper too. What used to cost a few million just 25 years ago can now be bought in kit form for $45K. Not too shabby!
But we found one problem. How do a bunch of inexperienced high school and college kids get to work on a satellite if one costs that price? We have little if any experience and the chances of us killing it immediately are through the roof.
Wouldn’t it be great, if we could get the cost of a satellite way, way, way down, so everyone can work on it without fear of blowing a multi-year budget in two minutes? We thought so!
So that’s what we decided to do!
…. And since its Covid, we have plenty of time to figure this out.
Create an extensible platform that everyone can use as the base foundation for their satellite. Complete with power, compute, communication and ADCD (that’s the stuff that determines where a satellite is pointing). In addition, create a very cheap and efficient base station platform so we can talk to this satellite.
Why re-invent the wheel every time? Anyone can use this and do whatever experiments they like.
And the cost? The goal is to get it under $5k, maybe even cheaper.
I am Alexander Rusich, a junior at Palos Verdes High School. I am leading the team to try and help us get there. We believe this project will not only be a great learning experience, but all create a fantastic satellite platform to help makes space accessible to everyone.
Want to help? We can use whatever help we can get!
All our work for the satellite and base station, including both hardware and software will be here on GitHub. Please follow and contribute!
Thank you in advance and let’s usher in a new era of space!