The Thrill of Building Space Hardware to Exceptionally High Standards
hackaday.com
hackaday.com
Groups like the Libre Space Foundation [1] and LibreCube [2] are doing a great job of opening up the whole stack (software+hardware for space, launch, and ground systems). Projects like Ardusat [3] are also helping to "democratize" space, to use a cliche. Ardusat actually led to the founding of Spire [4], one of many commercial EO constellation companies that have benefited from the process of commoditization.
The "giant leap" really is closing a lot faster than people realize.
If you're interested in exploring the kind of hardware on the space market, check out https://satsearch.co. We've currently got 5,000+ products & services for the space market listed, with the goal being to use data to crack open the supply chain, enabling spin-in, spin-out, tech transfer, etc.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders at satsearch.
[3] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/575960623/ardusat-your-...
I say 'cheap' in the sense that the hardware is not designed/have "engineered lifespans" to actually stay functional for long periods of time in space. As long as they go up, stay on for a few months and don't care that much about cosmic rays flipping bits to make 1+1=3, its good enough.
There's definitely a changing attitude towards what can be launched into space. The "cheap" satellites are not going to necessarily achieve the extreme performance needed for some missions, but by being more commercial, there's a new wave of missions that target specific, market-driven use-cases, and they don't all need the latest/greatest/fanciest tech.
Additionally, the orbit you fly in affects this conversation a lot. For Low Earth Orbit <1000 km, I'm confident that the market is going to be dominated by commodity hardware, except for flagship missions perhaps.
Higher altitudes require greater reliability due to radiation and are just more expensive orbits to get to. So I think it's going to take a little longer. Having said that, there are a bunch of companies tackling the higher orbits, like SpaceX with Starlink [3], and even YC alum Astranis [4] in GEO.
The way I like to think of it is that the space sector is maturing from a craft to a profession, and with that, commoditization offers a clear path towards scalability.
[2] https://www.planet.com/company/approach
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat...
I kinda draw the analogy of how the Raspberry Pi went from being a learning tool, to something that hackers/makers saw as an opportunity to innovate on. CubeSats went through a similar transition.
The work that then led to commercial activities came from a lot of different people have similar ideas about how commoditization can help to reduce costs and allow for riskier projects.
There's actually a strong bias in the media that doesn't reflect the diversity of projects, missions, and technologies on the market at the moment. The idea of using a platform like CubeSats to open up the space sector is a lot more widespread than I think more people are aware of.
This has also led to a lot more university level science projects too. And the increased economies of scale for cubesat components have driven priced down low enough that there are high school classes launching cubesats.
Pretty remarkable that a company like Amazon allows for experiments like Ground Station. They have a pretty clear business model and I think that it will help to open up the sector even further, in the sense that now you can just grab your satellite data in pretty much the same way you operate on AWS otherwise.
It's also interesting, because Amazon came somewhat late to the game and sorta blew open the market. Friends of mine founded Leaf Space [1] and they've sorta built a similar concept from the ground up, deploying antenna around the world.
Then you've got efforts like KSAT Lite [2], InfoStellar [3], ATLAS [4], and RBC Signals [5], so it's a pretty hot market at the moment.
I'm excited about AWS entering into the market because I believe it'll accelerate development of some pretty cutting-edge technologies like laser satcom, that will change the way we think of data from space.
[2] https://www.ksat.no/en/news/2016/january/ksat%20lite-network
[3] https://www.infostellar.net
The fact that CAN systems are limited to 8 bytes a transaction is a blessing and a curse. If everything can fit in 8 bytes--and generally broadcast--then CAN is awesome. It is fully differential. It has a really good autobaud algorithm. It has CRC and bit stuffing to avoid too many 1's or 0's in a row. It automatically retries under most conditions. It has a specified arbitration algorithm if two devices attempt to grab the bus.
If, however, you start needing bidirectional transactions or transactions larger than 8 bytes, it's not so good. And, one of the big problems today is that secure channel setup almost always requires bidirectional exchanges larger than 8 bytes.
Under most conditions, nowadays, you should probably reach for Ethernet, first. There is a reason why practically every standard (Ethernet, HDMI, USB-C, Displayport, Thunderbolt) has converged to 4 matched pairs for data transmission.
The single condition nowadays that would drive you towards CAN is truly deterministic, hard real-time timing.
But there is always a mix of communications standards. For higher speed data (such as from an imaging payload) then other standards such as Ethernet, LVDS, Spacewire, etc. are used.
For a critical communications bus in space there aren't that many good options. CAN and MIL-STD-1553 are probably the most common that you will find. I have worked with both and CAN is definitely much nicer to use.
Gives you a good idea of the challenge in fitting solar panels, batteries, flight controller, radios, insulation, etc into a 1U cubesat.
https://m.yeggi.com/q/cubesat/
3d printers as cheap as $170 can print these, with reasonably good accuracy with the right tuning/settings and 0.1mm layer height.
s/hardware/software/. I'm curious to know what the ISS "tech stack" is…
Temperature swings affecting the seal materials are probably a bigger issue than the pressure differential. Your car's tires handle a similar ~1 atmosphere seal easily.