New
Scientist: Four apps have won a place on a satellite called
Strand-1. The winning apps were announced today by
mission planners at the UK's Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd
and the Surrey Space Center. The nanosatellite, measuring just
30 x 10 x 10 cm and weighing only 4 kg, features an
Android-based smartphone. The phone's accelerometers and GPS
receivers will form the heart of the satellite's guidance
system, writes Paul Marks for
New Scientist. One app, Scream in Space, which will
run videos of people screaming on the phone’s display,
aims to see whether vibrations from the phone’s
loudspeaker can be picked up through its chassis by a
microphone. Other apps will take pictures of Earth using the
phone’s camera, measure variations of Earth’s
magnetic field with the satellite’s onboard magnetometer,
and use the phone’s screen to display telemetry data on
the satellite’s progress through space. Designers hope to
piggyback
Strand-1 on a rocket launch sometime between January
and April 2012.
