SA's first nanosatellite survived its first year

[QuintonB]

South Africa’s nanosatellite: one year, 250 million kilometres

TshepisoSAT has performed well in its first year of operation

 

[krycor]

Cool.. curious about how automated things are vs engineer monitoring it 24/7..

 

[LaraC]

TshepisoSAT has survived the sun’s harsh radiation, extreme temperature fluctuations, a few strong solar storms, and two close encounters with defunct Russian satellites.

It becomes a problem when there isn’t enough space to park your junk satellites.

 

[LaraC]

and inspired thousands of learners, resulting in a tripling of student applications for the CPUT Space Programme for 2015.

Hopefully it will also inspire the lower grade pupils to excel in math and scientific fields.

 

[koeksGHT]

Cool.. curious about how automated things are vs engineer monitoring it 24/7..

Sat has to be automated, it doesn't get signal a lot of the time. Poor guy has to make sure this thing survives lol.

 

[Browser]

Maybe next time they'll strap a 5 year old cell phone to it so it can take better pictures than the potato they used on this thing, just a thought. Nevermind an off the shelf DSLR which would have been next-to nothing in any budget involving launching something into space.

 

[crackersa]

south Africans should be proud that they are stepping in this direction and that it worked! congrats!

 

[Tacet]

Maybe next time they'll strap a 5 year old cell phone to it so it can take better pictures than the potato they used on this thing, just a thought. Nevermind an off the shelf DSLR which would have been next-to nothing in any budget involving launching something into space.

The budget for a satellite isn't only about money, but also about weight and power consumption. Either item you've mentioned would be extremely inefficient for the intended purpose. Also, neither item would last long in space.

 

[EricsON]

The budget for a satellite isn't only about money, but also about weight and power consumption. Either item you've mentioned would be extremely inefficient for the intended purpose. Also, neither item would last long in space.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, electronics don't always behave the same in space versus on Earth. The environment differs drastically and for example a DSLR most likely would fail quite quickly.

 

[krycor]

Yip.. i was thinking the same initially and then rethought that idea due to space environment + housing of the unit.. that being said, i'm sure they -could- work around it by using select portions with the right protection(the killer i suspect will the radiation +operating temperature ranges.. but again.. i suspect its cheaper to build with right components from the start that protect earthly ranged equipment).

And then there is the power factor + limited telecoms + storage.. all of these play a role on what sensing equipment is viable.. no point putting a 20megapixel cam on the thing and then the link down takes a day to transmit 1/2 the pics back etc.. i.e. need to look at the overall system from capture, transmissions etc and then have contingencies.