Satellite Diaries

I'm a nice guy launching a nice little musical satellite.  But what if I were a super-villain?  What if _you_ were a super-villain and launching your own satellite?  Think-- and listen (or read) too-- how much damage can you do from (pico)-space, my latest podcast for "365 Days of Astronomy".  And now let's expand on that.

I like rocket photos and was getting a little jealous looking at all the Copenhagen folk's photos. Where were my rocket's photos?  I'm launching the Project Calliope music satellite with Interorbital Systems (IOS) and even I don't know what my rocket looks like!

Edges are where topics intersect.  Edges are where uncomfortable thoughts reside.  Edges define a topic by being just barely part of that topic.  They are the border between what is known, and what is speculative.Working around edges requires new methods, disruption, and massive creativity.  Web2.0 is about breaking the border between reader and creator.  Science2.0 is about expanding the choices of how we do science.  The new space race and things like the X-Prize are about breaking down the old framework of space exploration to make new methods.  Heck, DARPA is about research at the edge of things.The SpaceUpDC.org 'unconference' last week was all about edges.

"We're building a rocket.  We're building it bigger" -  Copenhagen Suborbital."We've got the biggest balls of them all" - AC/DCI'll steal UniverseToday's summary, then tell you to skip reading everyone else's coverage of it (even mine):

Ah, summer, the time to neglect thinking and just build crap.  So, much as with the DIY Clean Room, I started gathering bits to make the DIY Vacuum chamber.I'm building a vacuum chamber to make sure that my satellite doesn't go kablooey when it hits space. Vacuum is a nasty environment.  We have no pressure, we have outgassing, and (least we not forget) we have the simple removal of air.

Will picosatellites pollute space like in Wall-E? Why do we let amateurs kill Mother Earth? Send in the UN!These are part of the overwhelming comments following my Discovery interview. I am amazed at the variety of space litter connondrums presented.  I thought about writing a calm, well-measured response, but you know what?  If the posters can rant, so can I!Unlike them, however, I will rant with scientific backing on my side.

I am often asked questions about my musical picosatellite, Project Calliope. Easy questions have concrete answers. "What are your sensors?": I-CubeX magnetic, thermal, light. "What magnetic field is expected?": ."How are you going to distribute the tracks?": as free remixable MIDI files via web.Others are either vague or awkward. "When will the satellite be done?": obviously 'by launch'. "What will it sound like?": whatever the musician wants. "What's your downlink bandwidth?" I'm still working on the radio parts.

What does the ionosphere sound like?  Well, our Project Calliope sonification will map the ionosphere's properties to a musical range.  What you'll hear is the volume and changes of activity within it.In some ways, sound is the best method for getting a 'big picture' of an item.  Think of a large body of water.  With your eyes close, you can tell the gentle lapping of a lake from the burble of a brook, the flow of a river, or the periodic crashing waves of an ocean.

How high is space, how far can you fall with a parachute, where is the Project Calliope satellite going to be, and where does the hard radiation from the sun get nasty?  Gathered for the first time in one place is our High Altitude Explorer's Guide.A typical airplane cruises at 9km (6 miles) up, around 30,000 feet.  Military jets (from the SR-71 onward to modern planes) can hit over 30km (19 miles) up, over 100,000 feet.Can you parachute from that height?  Yes, in 1960 Joseph Kittinger set the record at 31.3km (19.5 miles), or 102,800 feet.  Felix Baumgartner is trying this year, 2010, to freefall from 36km (over 22 miles), an 118,000 feet fall.

What do you get when you mix politics and space exploration?a) an impenetrable messb) an interesting clash between technology and peoplec) something scarier than sausage makingFor those who think politics is messy or scary, I agree. But it makes for good reading.  And when you read space politics, you also get nice logo-like images like this one.I've covered some of the 'people' issues abut space exploration, most recently in . But I'm focused on just getting my lil' old satellite up. What's the picture for getting people, space stations, nuclear reactors, and kitchen sinks into space?

While I'm busy building an instrument to convert the ionosphere to music, this NASA group has sonified the Sun. Astronomers at Univ. of Sheffield "found that huge magnetic loops that have been observed coiling away from the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere, known as coronal loops, vibrate like strings on a musical instrument. [...] Using satellite images of these loops, which can be over 60,000 miles long, the scientists were able to recreate the sound by turning the visible vibrations into noises and speeding up the frequency so it is audible to the human ear. ""It is a sort of music as it has harmonics."Sample this 18 second flare music: