The Kickstarter The Speed of Light Project by Caspar Noyons has raised $9,141 towards a goal of$11,148goal with two days remaining. The goal is to create an installation that demonstrates the 8.3 minutes that it takes for light to travel from the earth to the sun. The plan is to build a 555 meter long trail on which a person will
follow a LED path (3 LED per meter, 1665 LED’s in total) showing the exact speed of 4km/h which is slow walking pace. This journey will then take the amount of time required: 8.3 minutes. A perfect place for this is the IJpromenade in the North of Amsterdam. Next to the IJ Canal it offers a great open space next to the water along a long straight line of just the right size.
wants to change the world by bringing science and technology together with art to capture minds and hearts, engaging all of society in the future of space exploration, and promoting scientific innovation and collaboration.
This is not fiction – this is the human pursuit for extraterrestrial intelligence led by real-life legends from the SETI Institute in California – Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Eavesdropping on ET has been around for a long time and the search for an alien signal that would change everything. Is it time that we start broadcasting targeted signals as well? If so, are we putting the entire civilization at risk? Prominent scientists think so. In this film you will see the hunt for the alien signal along with METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International’s quest to start up the controversial project of broadcasting messages from Earth.
Your support will ensure that this fascinating story reaches Earthlings, making you part of a team with a duo of award-winning Directors and the Co-producer of an Oscar-winning film.
More about the project:
Join the Earthlings Quest! This is a cinematic feature-length documentary that will tell the story of SETI – the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence through the SETI Institute and METI International. You will meet Jill Tarter, Seth Shostak, Jon Richards and Douglas Vakoch among others. Jill was the inspiration for the Hollywood blockbuster movie “Contact” (1997), where we witness Jodie Foster as the character Ellie Arroway, receiving a signal from ET. Both Jill and Seth have been role models for spreading the word of science and inspiring future generations.
We are aiming to launch our first satellite in the latter half of 2017 and begin servicing in 2018. A new satellite will be launched every year following the first satellite.
The cost for a shooting star display would be similar to that of a fireworks event.
The company NanoRacks has a system installed in the Japanese Kibo module on the Int. Space Station that ejects small CubeSat satellites into orbit. Over 100 satellites have now been deployed by NanoRacks. This video shows the deployment of satellites in 2014:
CubeSats fly free after leaving the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer on the International Space Station on May 17, 2016. Seen here are two Dove satellites. The satellites are part of a constellation designed, built and operated by Planet Labs Inc. to take images of Earth from space. The images have several humanitarian and environmental applications, from monitoring deforestation and urbanization to improving natural disaster relief and agricultural yields in developing nations. A total of 17 CubeSats have been released since Monday from a small satellite deployer on the outside of the Kibo experiment module’s airlock. CubeSats are a new, low-cost tool for space science missions. Instead of the traditional space science missions that carry a significant number of custom-built, state-of-the-art instruments, CubeSats are designed to take narrowly targeted scientific observations, with only a few instruments, often built from off-the-shelf components.One of the CubeSats deployed in the past week includes STMSat-1, which was assembled and tested by elementary students at St. Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington, Virginia: Elementary School Students Make History with Help from Orbital ATK.
St. Thomas More Cathedral School is now the first elementary school in the world to launch a CubeSat into orbit thanks to financial and volunteer support from Orbital ATK’s Space Systems Group. Over the last three years, 400 pre-kindergarten through eighth grade students have participated in all aspects of the project, from design, to construction, to testing.
The CubeSat, officially known as St. Thomas More (STM) Sat-1, will photograph the Earth and transmit images to remote ground stations throughout the country, engaging more than 10,000 grade school students who will participate via Remote Mission Operations Centers.
The CubeSat, STMSat-1(Credit: St. Thomas More Cathedral School)
Joe Pellegrino, Orbital ATK engineer, NASA deputy project manager and a parent at the school, served as the team’s mission manager and led the students through all aspects of getting a mission off the ground.
“Usually these are built by universities or even grad students, so it’s quite remarkable that we’ve been able to do this with grade students,” said Pellegrino. “We taught the students about design philosophy how to do computerized design. The students also helped us with a vibration test. We even did a high altitude test in the parking lot of the school.”
St. Thomas More Cathedral School students gather to watch their CubeSat deploy from the International Space Station. (Credit: St. Thomas More Cathedral School)
The CubeSat is four inches long and weighs close to three pounds. It was carried to space on Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo resupply spacecraft as part of NASA’s Education Launch of Nanosatellites IX mission in December of 2015. Along with CubeSats from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Michigan, STMSat-1 deployed from the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer on May 16. The students expect to start receiving their first images this week.
STMSat-1 (bottom right) deploys from the International Space Station on May 16, 2016. (Credit: NASA).
Here’s a message from the Miles Space Project, which has won $50k in prize money so far in NASA’s CubeQuest Challenge competition to design, build, and fly small satellites “capable of advanced operations near and beyond the moon”.
Tampa, FL – March 17, 2016. Today, NASA announced that Team Miles, the leading contestant in the NASA CubeQuest Challenge, has once again secured a top tier position in Ground Tournament 2. As the 1st place winner of Ground Tournament 1, Team Miles was already eligible to secure a place on the SLS Exploratory Mission Launch scheduled for 2018. With this second win, they have now accumulated $50,000 in prize money.
Wes Faler, team lead for Miles stated,
“I’m very proud of my team. I know we still have a long, hard road ahead of us. I’ve seen the competition and we know how qualified they are. We’ll continue to forge ahead and not take anything for granted. Our team has a daring mission plan and I’m thrilled that NASA has recognized our capabilities with two consecutive ground tournament victories.”
According to Alex Wingeier, Digital Janitor for Team Miles,
“I believe the win came as a result of the many structural improvements based on feedback from the NASA Safety Team as well as the continued successful testing and implementation of the ConstantQ thrusters provided by Fluid & Reason, Inc. and the R.A.C.P. boards from Yosemite Space.”
Team Miles is the only non-university team to earn a prize in Ground Tournament 2. As a team of citizen scientists and engineers, they came together initially through Tampa Hackerspace, a community, non-profit workshop located in Tampa, FL. The team soon expanded to include experts in radiation, communications, software development, and project management.
The NASA Cube Quest Challenge is a competition to build space-ready, small satellites capable of advanced communication and propulsion near and beyond the moon. Teams strive for high-speed data communications, navigation, and survival in lunar orbit or deep space, competing for an unprecedented $5.5 million prize purse in NASA’s first ever in-space challenge. Cube Quest is part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program which accelerates technology by engaging non-traditional sources in competition.
The Miles spacecraft is a 6U satellite, about the size of a breadbox, that will be capable of navigating to the Moon, establishing Lunar orbit, conducting its mission, and then navigating to a final orbit near Mars. The entire mission will be flown autonomously by a sophisticated onboard computer system and powered by evolutionary plasma thrusters.
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