Your average satellite these days is roughly on par in terms of size with your average living room, give or take, and so naturally the cost of lofting one into orbit is, if you'll pardon the phrase,
sky high. Despite that, many offer less processing power a mobile processor like
Snapdragon. The obvious solution? Chuck a smartphone into orbit and revel in the savings. That's the idea behind the PhoneSat, helped along by the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, which strapped a
Nexus One into a rocket with 1,000lbs of thrust and threw it up to 28,000 feet to see how it copes with the immense stress of riding into space. Of course, 28,000 feet isn't quite space (NASA would have run out of astronaut badges long ago), but the G-forces and temperature cycles felt during this short trip are comparable to a one-way voyage to orbit. The first such launch didn't go so well, with the rocket suffering a ballistic return -- coming in like a projectile without a 'chute. The shattered remains of that are shown above. But, the second flight was rather more successful, and the video results can be seen below -- captured by the phone itself.
Update:
Matt Reyes, one of the folks behind the launch, wrote in to let us know of
another article here on the project, including more details on the history of the team and the various hardware beyond the N1 payload. Matt, along with project members
Chris Boshuizen and
Will Marshall, are NASA engineers, helped by Ryan Hickman at Google, which probably helps to explain how they were able to get from the photo above to the successful launch below in just one iteration.
[Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson]
posted July 30th 2010 2:40PM
@StalkyTheFish
who said it didn't?
and what would anyone want off it?
@StalkyTheFish The memory card indeed survived just fine and we retrieved valuable data.
Google 1
Apple 0
28,000 feet? Weak sauce. Try 104,000 feet with a Pentax DSLR using baloons.
http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/31970-pentax-k10d-space.html
When someone can beat that, I'll be impressed.
@okiedokie Ha. Stay tuned. We'll be there soon enough :)
28,000 feet? Weak sauce. Try 104,000 feet with a Pentax DSLR using balloons.
http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-dslr-discussion/31970-pentax-k10d-space.html
When someone can beat that, I'll be impressed.
@okiedokie try 125000ft with canons for 80 bucks :) http://vimeo.com/12421661
The most powerful and the fastest smartphone ever! Rocket powered Nexus One.
"I'M NEXUS ONE, BIIITCH!"
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Just to clarify, your average 2h-long flight usually cruises at 35,000ft and that's not space...
They should have used a g1 that thing was built like a tank
That was awesome.
"Despite that, many offer less processing power a mobile processor like Snapdragon."
Just me, or does this not sound right?
@pi rules No, this is true. Most modern day satellites have space-hardened processors that are not very powerful.
There are some specific examples where this is not true, but certainly not at the price-point of a smartphone.
@motorbikematt No, sorry, I wasn't doubting that (although I admit that is very interesting and I wouldn't suspect that). I meant, shouldn't the sentence be "...many offer less processing power than a mobile processor..."