Free/libre software, hardware, and ideals is building the next Space Age
Four new resources worth exploring every Friday
FOSS IN SPACE #5: CanSat
Here are this week's four free/libre space resources that are worth exploring:
1. Sat Not Pop
A CanSat is a simulated satellite design where all its major components (power, communications, payload) are designed to fit within the volume and shape of a regular pop can. Being inexpensive to build and something that can be taken from design to launch (into the air, not space) in less than a year, it has a particular appeal to students (and me!) to try their hand at hacking on space technology. There are various CanSat competitions held around the world to encourage high school and university students to do just that.
Link: CanSat
2. LittleBlueDot
The UK version of the CanSat competitions saw a team of high school students use a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 as the core of their design. Launched in the air by a sounding rocket, their CanSat safely returned to Earth using a student-designed parachute. Contest rules assigned a primary mission to measure air pressure and temperature during the descent, while the team created a secondary mission of imaging and mapping the ground below, an idea that arose when considering "potential asteroid mining in the future".
Link: A tiny, can-sized, Raspberry Pi-powered satellite
3. Sunny With A Chance Of Storms
Deep leArninG Geomagnetic pErtuRbation (DAGGER) is an open source machine learning model developed to predict potentially dangerous solar storms. Using a combination of space weather sensors monitoring solar activity, geomagnetic perturbations observed at ground stations, and AI tools, its developers claim the model gives a 30 minute advance warning of dangerous space weather, giving operators of critical Earth and space infrastructure time to batten down the hatches.
Link: NASA-enabled AI Predictions May Give Time to Prepare for Solar Storms
4. Happy Hacking High Frontier
The exploration and development of space is currently an endeavour the vast majority of us are consigned to watch happen from the sidelines. Libre Space Foundation is on a mission to change that! They are a group of hackers bringing the ways of FOSS - open source/data/development/governance - to actively build space technologies and share the knowledge of how to do so. Challenge the status quo of the traditional space incumbents and make space accessible to all.
Link: How to Hack Your Way to Space
Quote of the Week: "[For building our space projects] we only use open source tools, because we think that if you want to publish something open source, the tools also need to be open source, because everyone will be able to access it."
— Manthos Papamatthaiou, How to Hack Your Way to Space
Until next week....Onward!
You can like, share, or comment on this post on the Fediverse 💬
« Previous: FOSS IN SPACE #4: Open Lunar