NASA SSTP Booth Duty

at the SmallSat conference today

I love the NASA Small Spacecraft Technology Program. This is where the Planet founders did the PhoneSat project. I first met them launching rockets in the Black Rock Desert (see this cool video.). The RocketMavericks crew helped them accelerate their g-load testing by having an unscheduled ballistic return of the launch vehicle into the Black Rock Desert playa!

In the video, that’s me and my son digging our phat V-2 out of the crater in the background. The story starts with the intrepid team from NASA (now Planet Labs) who figured out that a stock Android Nexus phone can work just fine as a low-cost satellite — it has a better processor than many satellites, and decent multi-axis sensors and GPS. They vacuum and thermal tested it at Ames. For deployment from the ISS, it is mounted in a cubesat chassis with extra batteries and a yellow metal tape measure for an antenna.