Thursday, February 16, 2017

STEM and Space

A Nashua club has undertaken a series of STEM projects to get young people interested in Ham Radio, using space as a medium:

A STEM Learning Project for Young People

 
 
 
 
 
 
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High Altitude Balloon At The Edge Of Space
High Altitude Balloon At The Edge Of Space
As some of you may already know, Anita and I have been working with our local Radio Club on a project to promote STEM learning and interest in Amateur Radio among young people in our area. The idea is to work with kids grades 7-12 to plan, build, launch and recover a High-Altitude Balloon carrying Amateur Radio. Our balloon should be able to reach an altitude of about 100,000 ft before it bursts and the payload returns to earth via a parachute system. The payload will include a computer, GPS and a 2 meter APRS transmitter to record the balloon’s flight track, atmospheric data and altitude throughout the flight. The balloon will also carry a video camera and will capture a video record of the entire flight. You can learn more about our project here.

Thursday, February 09, 2017

The SmallSat Launcher Wars - Hackaday

Fascinating article on the current push at "SmallSat" technologies:

Over the last decade or so the definition of what a ‘small satellite’ is has ballooned beyond the original cubesat design specification to satellites of 50 or 100 kg. Today a ‘smallsat’ is defined far more around the cost, and sometimes the technologies used, than the size and shape of the box that goes into orbit.
There are now more than fifty companies working on launch vehicles dedicated to lifting these small satellites into orbit, and while nobody really expects all of those to survive the next few years, it’s going to be an interesting time in the launcher market. Because I have a sneaking suspicion that Jeff Bezos’ statement that “there’s not that much interesting about cubesats” may well turn out to be the twenty first century’s “nobody needs more than 640kb,” and it’s possible that everybody is wrong about how many of the launcher companies will survive in the long term
read more at:

http://hackaday.com/2017/02/09/the-smallsat-launcher-war/