helloallworlds

#27. Loads of Little Linux Spacecraft

Last edited on 2023-08-18 • Tagged under #space

Here are this week's 3 links worth exploring:

Smartphone and other consumer miniaturization technologies offer tantalizing opportunities to both lower the cost of space hardware and incredibly expand the realm of possible space activities. BLISS ([University of California] Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail) is a proposal to use such technologies to build a swarm of small solar sails acting in concert to explore the Solar System. Attached to each sail would be a low-cost, lightweight (~10g), Linux-powered spacecraft. Possible missions include visits to near Earth asteroids and a sample return mission from a Jupiter-family comet. Crowdfunded space missions, perhaps? https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11226
Part of the proposed BLISS spacecraft is VoCore2 PC: a coin-sized computer with 128MB RAM and array of interfaces that would run Linux and custom mission software: https://vocore.io/v2u.html
Spacecraft software updates are often unencrypted. Libre Space Foundation is testing the security of software updates for space-based assets as part of the REWIRE open-source Smart Satellites Use Case: https://www.rewire-he.eu/smart-satellites-secure-software-updates-for-spacecraft-applications-and-services/

Quote of the Week: "It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening." — H.G. Wells

Onward!

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