DonsDeals Blog: Flying Laptop

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Friday, January 6, 2012

Flying Laptop

The small satellite Flying Laptop is the first satellite of the Small Satellites Program in Stuttgart. This mission shall establish the foundation for the required infrastructure as well as the expertise for the Small Satellites Program of the Institute of Space Systems (IRS), University of Stuttgart. The satellite is developed and build at the IRS and will be operated with the institutes' own ground station. The design, development, construction and future operation are primarily done by Ph.D. students and undergraduate students.
Flying Laptop will have the dimensions of 60x70x80 cm³ and a mass of 120 kg. It is three-axis stabilized and will orbit and survey the earth in a low polar orbit of approximately 700 km. The Flying Laptop shall be launched into orbit with an indian PSLV as a secondary payload. The objectives of the Flying Laptop are the test and verification of new technologies, e.g. a reconfigurable FPGA onboard computer, a novel unfolding meachanism and a GPS experiment, as well as scientific earth surveillance.
The Flying Laptop is currently between the end of phase B and the beginning of phase C. In 2011 the construction of the flatsat for functional verification will be started. In parallel, the structure-thermal model will be built to verify the environmental capability. The launch is projected to be in early 2013. The lifetime of Flying Laptop shall be two years.
Read More...
http://www.kleinsatelliten.de/index.php/en/flying-laptop.html

Pretty Cool Project. I didn't see, how they plan on getting it into Orbit. I wonder, if they are planning on using a Rocket or a Balloon?

Don