[57north-discuss] Things are going to spaaaaaaace

[Hibberd, Dave]

Lightsail-1 [1] (A solar sail carrying cubesat) is going to spaaace at 
1445 UTC today!

It's piggybacking the mysterious now declassified X-37B shuttle mission. 
Get your tinfoil hats out - ~they~ claim they're not weaponising space 
and are doing science, but we all know not to trust ~them~. [2] 
~citrusfruits~

There's other cool stuff in that payload too - lots of research from the 
US Navy, including a TCP/IP server on a cubesat and more! Full manifest 
is at [3]

If you're interested, Lightsail-1 will have a 9600bd FSK telemetry 
downlink in the amateur 70cm allowance - there's a chance that we could 
contribute to realscience(tm) by listening and sending in what we hear - 
this may be worth looking into. Read more about the overview here [4] 
and in detail with timelines at [5].

What a time to be alive in!

Much Love

Hx

Links:
------
[1] http://sail.planetary.org/
[2] 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/19/us_air_force_x37b_space_plane/
[3] 
http://www.ulalaunch.com/uploads/docs/Launch/AtlasV_AFSPC-5_ULTRASat_CubeSat_descriptions.pdf
[4] http://amsat-uk.org/2015/05/20/lightsail-1-launch/
[5] 
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2015/20150518-lightsail-first-day-space.html