2 ms·
> When the satellite is in orbit around the moon and visible from Earth, one of three ground stations will shoot a laser towards its approximate location. The l
by scotth 13y ago
> When the satellite is in orbit around the moon and visible from Earth, one of three ground stations will shoot a laser towards its approximate location. The laser beam from Earth will scan a patch of sky and should illuminate the spacecraft at some point. When that happens, the spacecraft will begin transmitting its own laser towards the ground station and the two will lock on to each other. Once that happens, communications can begin.
Cool handshake.
- bigiain 13y agoI'm now imagining a science-fair / makerfaire type demo project – some Arduino and RaspberryPi pairs with a few RC servos, modulated laserpointers, and webcams – with a "ground station" searching for a "satellite" which might be a quadcopter or a kite or a helium balloon… (And there's a Maker Faire here in Sydney later this year…)
- pcl 13y agoI wonder how long the handshake takes. I imagine that the scan looks something like how CRTs work. But the triangulation back to the origin and whatnot seems like it'd take a certain amount of samples, or a pair of sufficiently-displaced sensors working in concert.