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I was delighted to learn recently you can get a nanosatellite to orbit for not very much money, and at the same time disappointed to find out that it would not
by dharma1 11y ago
I was delighted to learn recently you can get a nanosatellite to orbit for not very much money, and at the same time disappointed to find out that it would not stay up there for very long. Somehow I thought satellites could stay on orbit permanently
- zardo 11y agoThere are a couple projects working on miniaturized ion drives for cube sats.
- dharma1 11y agohow much energy do these consume? would solar panels on a cubesat provide enough energy for staying on orbit for years?
- rtkwe 11y agoYep there's still a good bit of atmospheric drag even at the ISS's altitude. Once you get beyond the atmosphere you get solar wind creating drag too. The ISS is periodically reboosted into a higher orbit by engines on one of the Russian modules.
- DavidSJ 11y agoAlso, small satellites have much higher surface area to mass ratios.
- rtkwe 11y agoYeah that's another big factor in how fast they decay. The fact that they deorbit easily is good though, if they stayed up for a long time it'd be harder for NASA to approve so many so easily because they'd become a threat to LEO operations. A lot of them are launched from the ISS.