[Space] Development ideas...

[Matt Everingham]

I was thinking about the hardware development side of flying open
source stuff in space and thought I would share a couple ideas on
potential development pathways.

There are microcontrollers out there that have been flown on cubesats.
 I would think it would be possible to port arduino code to run on one
of these spacefaring microcontrollers in order to open the door for an
open source satellite.  I could imagine this approach evolving into a
satellite version of the ardupilot.  Below are a couple of links with
info about these things.  The near term version could be used on
balloon flights to point payloads and control the radio.  Balloon
flights would be a great way to test something like this because, if
you play your cards right, you stand a chance of actually getting the
hardware back at the end.

Some links:

AMSAT's history of amateur satellites:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/history.php

These guys are using at ATMEGA in their satellite:
http://mstl.atl.calpoly.edu/%7Ebklofas/Presentations/DevelopersWorkshop2009/5_Missions_1/9_Wilson-AubieSat.pdf

And the story behind the ardupilot development process:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/ardupilot-main-page


Matt