Have you heard about KickSat?
A few hours ago (3:25 PM EDT to be exact), the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took a hundred pocket-sized satellites into space, and these tiny spacecraft all run on TI’s microcontroller technology.
Some of you may already be familiar with Zac Manchester. He started this project as an undergrad student at Cornell University, focusing on packing as much technology as possible onto a poker chip-sized satellite he calls a ‘sprite’.
Zac created a Kickstarter campaign back in 2011 to raise funds for his project. Any engineer, physicist or Maker could pledge money and secure a slot for a tiny satellite. About a year ago, the donors wrote code and programmed the tiny satellites using the MSP430™ Value Line LaunchPad and Energia open source software framework. The combination of the MSP430 MCU and Energia software enabled a simple and uniform way for all the sponsors to setup their ‘sprites.’
Each sprite contains one of TI’s CC430 wireless MCUs. It combines an MSP430 MCU with a long-range, low-power integrated radio frequency (RF) transceiver (TI’s CC1101 SoC) that’s powerful enough to communicate with receivers on Earth while orbiting in space at an altitude of 175-225 miles.
In approximately two weeks, ‘KickSat’ will get into the final position to deploy the 104 ‘sprites’ into low-Earth orbit, with the hope that these pocket sized spacecraft will be able to communicate and transmit data down to Earth.
Once the sprites are pushed out of ‘KickSat’ – they will become individual, free flying satellites. Each one of them has the CC430 chip, a little solar cell for power, a temperature sensor, three-axis magnetometers (to measure magnetic fields) and a three-axis gyroscope (to measure the spin rate of the ‘sprite’).
You can watch the demonstration here. For more information, check out the full story on TI's Think.Innvoate blog.
We will keep the community up-to-date on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ about Zac’s mission. You can also checkout Zac’s website, which he will be updating regularly.
Did any of you participate in KickSat? We'd love to hear what you programmed your 'sprite' to do!