Smartphone-Powered Satellites Are Destined for Space Travel.

Forget the in-dash car phone. If all goes
according to plan in 2011, a group of British
scientists will be rocketing an Android
smartphone to infinity, and beyond.
Researchers at the University of Surrey and
Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL)
in England are developing an Android-
powered satellite to be launched into lower-
earth orbit.
Dubbed Strand-1 (Surrey Training,
Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator),
the 11.8-inch satellite will take pictures of the
Earth on a mission to be launched later in
the year. Included in its control electronics
are the guts of a commercial smartphone
running Android.
With Strand-1, SSTL researchers want to
show off the features and capabilities of a
satellite while primarily using relatively
inexpensive off-the-shelf components.
“The economic implications of this are
really exciting,” mission concepts engineer
Shaun Kenyon told Wired.com. “If these
phones stand up to the extreme
environments we see in space, it’s amazing
to think we could eventually leverage low-
cost mobile technology to use in satellite
production. ”
This isn’t the first time scientists have
launched phones aboard rockets. Last year,
researchers at the NASA Ames Research
Center experimented with sending a couple
of HTC Nexus One phones 30,000 feet into
the atmosphere, attaching each phone as
payload in a small rocket. One phone bit
the dust hard after the rocket parachute
failed, but the other one walked away from
its mission unscathed, capturing more than
two and a half hours of recorded video on
its 720×480-pixel camera.
Cost is a big motivation for the experiment.
Many of the standard features seen in
current smartphones — cameras, GPS
navigation, Wi-Fi accessibility — are also
found on satellites. But the smartphone
components are a fraction of the size,
weight and cost of those used in
aerospace.
“We want to see if smartphones can
actually survive up there, ” Kenyon said,
“and we’ll be looking at how phone-specific
sensors like accelerometers perform in
space-flight conditions. ”
SSTL will initially launch the satellite
powered by an on-board computer, which
will judge how the phone ’s vitals are
holding up and monitor for malfunctions in
the phone ’s hardware. After the data on the
phone’s basic functioning are collected, the
computer will be turned off and the phone
will be used to control different parts of the
satellite.
SSTL won’t divulge the manufacturer or
model of the phone, but says it is indeed
powered by the Android OS.
The satellite will weigh just under ten
pounds and come equipped with miniature
reaction wheels for general torque and
orientation control, as well as GPS
navigation and pulse-plasma thrusters for
space propulsion. Kenyon estimates the
cost of the satellite to come in at less than
300 pounds, or just under $500.
SSTL has built and launched 34 satellites
since being founded in 1981. The company
specializes in smaller, low-cost satellites that
often cost much less than those normally
associated with space travel. In the past,
the company has worked on training and
development programs for NASA and the
European Space Agency. The smartphone
satellite project is being worked on in
conjunction with the Surrey Space Center
at the University of Surrey.
SSTL hopes to launch the satellite before the
end of 2011.



Source: Http://m.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/android-smartphone-space/